No elections will be held in the country with party chief Khaleda Zia behind the bars, senior BNP leaders said during Saturday’s rally marking the party’s 40th anniversary.
The rally on the street in front of the party headquarters began around 2:00pm but supporters started to gather at the venue from 11am.
Leaders and activists of the party’s different fronts and associate bodies from across the capital as well as other parts of the country thronged the rally with banners, placards and festoons demanding immediate release of the party’s imprisoned Chairperson Khaleda Zia.
The 73-year-old former prime minister has been serving a five-year term since February after she was convicted of embezzling foreign donations made to the Zia Orphanage Trust.
“No election will be held with Khaleda Zia in jail. The BNP will go to the election only after her release,” National Standing Committee Member Amir Khoshru Mahmud Chowdhury told the rally.
Standing Committee member and former speaker Jamiruddin Sircar echoed and said, “An election without Khaleda will not be credible.”
BNP chief Khaleda adviser Zainul Abedin, who also heads the Supreme Court Bar Association, said that the bails in two more cases will pave the way for Khaleda’s release from prison.
The next general election will have to be held under a non-party neutral administration for restoration of democracy in the country, BNP Standing Committee Member Goyeshwar Chandra Roy said.
“Who says that the only pre-condition for taking part in the polls is Khaleda Zia’s release? The parliament has to be dissolved and troops have to deployed in the polls,” he told the rally.
After capturing power following several coups and political upheavals in 1975, military dictator Ziaur Rahman founded the ‘Jatyiatabadi Ganatantrik Dal’ in February 1978.
The party was turned into the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) on Sep 1 the same year.