SUBCONTINENT

BNP pushes for polls by Aug in Bangladesh

Wednesday, 15 Jan, 2025
BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir warned of a deeper political and economic crisis if elections were delayed. (Photo courtesy: X@BNPSGOffice)

Dhaka: Former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has demanded that the general election be held by July-August this year, refuting interim government chief adviser Muhammad Yunus’s stance to stage it by the year-end or mid-2026.

“There is no reason to delay the election that much,” said BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir after an overnight meeting of the party’s standing committee that was chaired virtually by acting BNP chairperson Tarique Rahman from London.

Alamgir’s remarks came a day before the Election Reform Commission was scheduled to submit its report to the Yunus government. “The longer the elections are delayed, the deeper the political and economic crisis will become,” he said.

“We call on the government, the Election Commission and all political parties to take measures to hold the election by mid-year in the greater interest of the country,” Alamgir added, calling for political unanimity on the need to break the status quo.

The timeline of July-August 2025 demanded by the BNP is likely to put pressure on the interim government. Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus was chosen as the chief adviser to run the interim government after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government following a student agitation that erupted over a quota-in-jobs question but turned into a political campaign.

A report in The Telegraph quoted a source close to Alamgir as saying, “They [members in Yunus government] want to cling on to power by any means and float a political outfit along with a broader alliance with the Islamist parties. They want to buy time as the student leaders do not have any support base as of now.”

Aware of this situation, the BNP strategists are pushing for early polls as they fear that a mood in favor of the Islamist ideals would draw supporters away from the party, The Telegraph report quoted a political observer in Dhaka as saying.