Row ends: JP leaders meet Hasina, get 50 seats
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
Jatiya Party (JP) leaders Monday met Awami League (AL) president Sheikh Hasina and confirmed their share of 50 seats from the AL-led grand alliance to contest in the upcoming election to the 300-seat parliament, putting an end to hard bargains, reports UNB.
Emerging from an urgent meeting with the AL president at Sudhasadan, Jatiya Party's acting chairman Anisul Islam Mahmud said, "It has been finalised that our party candidates will contest for 50 seats."
Mahmud, along with his party-colleague Ziauddin Bablu, talked to the AL chief for 25 minutes in the last-ditched seat-sharing negotiation a day after JP aspirants separately filed nominations for maximum of the Jatiya Sangsad (JS) seats on the last day Sunday.
About the much-talked-about agreement between the two parties to make ex-President HM Ershad next President of the country, Mahmud said the grand alliance's main target was to ensure victory in the upcoming polls, scheduled for December 29.
For the last two days, rumours and apprehensions had run high across the country that the Jatiya Party would quit the grand alliance as AL was not agreed to make Ershad the President and to offer JP its desired 60 seats.
People started taking the rumour as a fact of the matter after JP all-in-all HM Ershad, following a party-presidium meeting, had declared JP would have no way but to run the race alone if the two major demands were not met.
Later, in the evening Sunday, JP and AL in a joint briefing declared that the grand alliance would continue to work as usual to contest the polls and, if they won, form the government unitedly.
Sources said the two former ruling parties reached a consensus that the matter of President post for Ershad would be finalised should the grand alliance win the polls, billed one of most crucial ones in Bangladesh's history in view of the political nemesis of all of the former rulers in the interim period since the 1/11 changeover.
Emerging from an urgent meeting with the AL president at Sudhasadan, Jatiya Party's acting chairman Anisul Islam Mahmud said, "It has been finalised that our party candidates will contest for 50 seats."
Mahmud, along with his party-colleague Ziauddin Bablu, talked to the AL chief for 25 minutes in the last-ditched seat-sharing negotiation a day after JP aspirants separately filed nominations for maximum of the Jatiya Sangsad (JS) seats on the last day Sunday.
About the much-talked-about agreement between the two parties to make ex-President HM Ershad next President of the country, Mahmud said the grand alliance's main target was to ensure victory in the upcoming polls, scheduled for December 29.
For the last two days, rumours and apprehensions had run high across the country that the Jatiya Party would quit the grand alliance as AL was not agreed to make Ershad the President and to offer JP its desired 60 seats.
People started taking the rumour as a fact of the matter after JP all-in-all HM Ershad, following a party-presidium meeting, had declared JP would have no way but to run the race alone if the two major demands were not met.
Later, in the evening Sunday, JP and AL in a joint briefing declared that the grand alliance would continue to work as usual to contest the polls and, if they won, form the government unitedly.
Sources said the two former ruling parties reached a consensus that the matter of President post for Ershad would be finalised should the grand alliance win the polls, billed one of most crucial ones in Bangladesh's history in view of the political nemesis of all of the former rulers in the interim period since the 1/11 changeover.