Quader questions legality of fugitive convict Tariq’s position in BNP

Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader on Sunday questioned how convicted fugitive Tariq Rahman became the acting chairman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) being a foreign national.

He asked this question at a press conference held at his secretariat office in Dhaka, reports Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha.

Posing another question to BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the AL general secretary said, “How much money did a convicted fugitive like Tariq Rahman invest to get foreign citizenship? Tariq Rahman siphoned off the money he invested abroad.”

About the BNP leaders’ statements on democracy and elections, he said BNP founder and military dictator Ziaur Rahman had undermined the country’s democracy by holding the ‘Yes-No vote’.

Quader, also the road transport and bridges minister, said at that time, Zia illegally declared himself the president as the chief of army staff.

All elections held during Zia’s reign, including the presidential election of 1977, the 1979 parliamentary elections and the presidential election of 1981, were questionable, he said.

Mentioning that the country’s people did not forget the Magura’s polls yet, the AL general secretary said Khaleda Zia held elections without voters on February 15, 1996 and tried to hold polls in 2006 with 1.23 crore fake voters.

“What kind of democracy was it?” he questioned.

He said the BNP men carried out terrorism and arson attacks, conducted oppression on minorities, seized voting centres, killed the leaders and workers of the oppositions and raped women during their regime.

Recalling the BNP’s misrules, Quader said the people have not yet forgotten the abhorrent instance set by the BNP in the country’s history.

The people of this country no longer want to walk on the path of so-called democracy taught by the BNP, he added.

He said those, who tarnished the image of the country by becoming world champion in graft five times in a row during their tenure, and the party, which repealed seven anti-corruption clauses from its constitution to pave ways for the corrupts to escape, are the self-confessed corrupt party and the patrons of graft.