Journalist, researcher, column writer and documentary film maker
No third political force has emerged in Bangladesh after the Awami League and BNP. The Jatiya Party has effectively acted as the Awami League’s B team. Since the July uprising, there have been murmurs in the public sphere that Jamaat-e-Islami might form the next government. The results of student union elections at several public universities appear to hint at that possibility.
When controversy erupted over the removal of President Md Shahabuddin’s portrait from Bangladesh’s foreign missions, many wondered whether the President was being removed or was planning to step down himself.
Chief Adviser of the interim government Professor Muhammad Yunus has said, “The election will be held in the first half of February. It will be a festive election, if we can reach a decision through consensus. This election is not just an ordinary election; it will be the rebirth of the nation.” On 14 September, at the Foreign Service Academy in the capital, during ongoing dialogue with political parties organised by the National Consensus Commission, he once again declared his firm stance on the 13th National Parliamentary Election.
A day after the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union (DUCSU) election, the Jahangirnagar University Central Students’ Union (JUCSU) election was also boycotted by the panel backed by BNP’s student wing, the Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal. At around 3:30 pm on Thursday, an hour and a half before the end of polling, they announced their boycott. Their allegation was that the election was not being conducted properly because of widespread irregularities, vote rigging and administrative bias. The panel’s General Secretary (GS) candidate Tanzila Hossain Baishakhi said, ‘From the very beginning we feared it would be a staged election.’
There is a perception among many that if elections are held under the PR system, the BNP will lose while Jamaat will come to power. Is that really the case, and is this why BNP opposes PR?
Senior journalist and columnist Bibhoranjan Sarkar has left behind a message of grief for honest journalists in Bangladesh, which may be called his self-written epitaph. That epitaph has become a grim document of the miserable state of professional journalism in Bangladesh.