DHAKA: Former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s BNP on Friday said it had no objection to the return of rival Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League to politics under a clean leadership, a day after the Bangladesh interim government said it had no plans to ban it.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) spokesman Ruhul Kabir Rizvi’s comments came on the day when two Dhaka University student organisations held separate protests demanding that the Awami League should be banned from contesting polls.
He suggested there should be no bar on Awami League returning to politics if it picks a leader who “is not guilty of any crime, has not killed students, or misappropriated or laundered money abroad”.
“We have nothing to say if the people accept Awami League after a quick trial of those involved in crimes committed by their regime,” Rizvi, BNP’s senior joint secretary general, said.
But he cautioned against the return of an “autocratic rule” in the country. “The democratic process and democratic exercise will fix one’s place in politics”.
Rizvi’s comments came a day after interim government chief Muhammad Yunus told a delegation of the International Crisis Group that his administration “has no plans to ban
the Awami League”.
He, however, said, individuals within the Awami leadership accused of crimes, including murder and crimes against humanity, would be tried in Bangladesh’s courts.
Yunus also said the government has not ruled out referring Awami League leaders to the International Criminal Court in The Hague following a UN fact-finding mission that reported potential crimes during the July-August 2024 protests that toppled Hasina’s nearly 16-year regime. “It is very much on the table”.
Hasina has been living in India since August 5 last year, when she fled Bangladesh following a massive students-led protest that toppled her Awami League’s 16-year regime.
Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) has issued arrest warrants for Hasina and several of her former cabinet ministers, advisers, and military and civil officials for “crimes against humanity and genocide”. “A trial will take place. Not only against her, but also all people associated with her - her family members, her clients or associates,” Yunus had said earlier in the month.
Following Hasina’s ouster, the leaders of the Students Against Discrimination (SAD), who led the violent protests, had demanded a ban on Awami League.
The BNP, at that time too, had opposed the idea saying they were not in favour of banning any party.
A group of SAD leaders, who recently floated a political outfit, the National Citizen Party (NCP), said they did not want Awami League’s rehabilitation or election participation while they sought to establish a ‘Second Republic’ scrapping the country’s original 1972 constitution.
A key NCP leader Hasnat Abdullah, in a Facebook post earlier in the day, claimed that a “conspiracy is afoot to rehabilitate the Awami League” at the behest of India in the name of a “Refined
Awami League”.
He claimed the military proposed a refined Awami League on March 11 in exchange for a seat-sharing deal. Rejecting it, he insisted on prosecution, while Jamaat-e-Islami and student groups also opposed the party’s rehabilitation, Dhaka Tribune reported.