UNB, Dhaka :
Claiming that the ruling Awami League was clean bowled by their movement’s ‘googly’, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Monday noted “much progress” towards the party’s aim of achieving victory on the streets.
“There is another spin (in cricket) called googly by which the batsman is bowled out with the stumps or the middle stump uprooted before he understands anything. Awami League was completely bowled out by BNP’s googly on (July) 28th and 29th,” Fakhrul said, while speaking at a protest rally at the historic Suhrawardy Udyan.
The BNP leader also claimed that braving rain and scorching heat, nearly five million (50 lakh) people attended their party’s grand rally at Nayapaltan on July 28, coming to the capital from all over the country, from ‘Teknaf to Tetulia’.
“People thronging that rally gave a message to Hasina to step down immediately,” the BNP leader observed.
He said they had given a simple programme of sit-ins at the entry points of the capital instead of hartal or blockade the next day (July 29), but hundreds of law enforcers equipped with arms and armoured vehicles, together with the ruling party ‘goons’. took up positions at the entry points of Dhaka getting paranoid about their programme: “They opened fire on innocent and unarmed people and utterly repressed them.”
He said the worst thing was that the police beat BNP senior leaders Gayeshwar Chandra Roy and Amanullah Aman by throwing them on the streets. “Later, they prepared the script and made stories and videos. Such a blackmailer the regime is!”
The BNP leader said those who do not share connections with the people resort to such blackmail and contrived stories. “People didn’t accept their stories. Have our leaders Gayeshwar Babu and Amanullah Aman been belittled by those stories? You, who created such dirty dramas, have been disgraced.”
Reiterating their party’s demand for holding the next election under a non-party government, Fakhrul said they do not want any election under Sheikh Hasina and her government. “We want elections under a caretaker government. If our demand is not accepted in a straight way, then it will be settled on the streets. We’ve come a long way and our victory is certain.”
As part of the party’s countrywide programme, BNP’s Dhaka south and north city units arranged the rally at the historic venue to protest the “oppression” on the party leaders and workers during their Saturday’s sit-in programme at different entrances of the capital.
Hundreds of leaders and activists of BNP and its associate bodies from different city areas participated in the rally amid the presence of a huge number of law enforcers all around the venue.
In the wake of attacks on the party’s sit-in on Saturday, Mirza Fakhrul announced the countrywide protest rallies. BNP’s all district and city units also organised a similar programme.
BNP’s sit-in programme at the key entry points of Dhaka on Saturday was marred by clashes and violence, leaving an unspecified number of people injured.
