Staff Reporter:
National Citizen Party (NCP) Convener Nahid Islam has described Jamaat-e-Islami’s so-called movement for “proportional representation (PR)” as nothing more than a calculated political deception.
In a Facebook post on Sunday, Nahid alleged that the PR campaign was launched deliberately to divert attention from the real question of constitutional and state reconstruction in light of the people’s uprising.
“This movement has been raised with the planned intention of steering the reform process of the Consensus Commission and the national dialogue away from their true purpose,” he wrote.
He further said that establishing an upper house based on proportional representation was originally conceived as part of a broader constitutional safeguard and one of the key demands for fundamental reform.
“We sought to build a movement to develop a legal framework for the July Charter grounded in such fundamental reforms and a greater national unity.
But Jamaat and its allies hijacked the idea, reducing it to a narrow structural issue of PR and using it as a bargaining tool for their petty partisan interests,” Nahid stated.
Accusing Jamaat of remaining absent from reform discussions both before and after the July Uprising, the NCP leader said, “They never made any meaningful proposal, presented any constitutional perspective, or demonstrated any commitment to a democratic republic.”
In a sharp critique, Nahid added that Jamaat’s recent endorsement of reforms under the Consensus Commission was not the product of genuine reformist aspiration but rather a “strategic infiltration.” “It is a political subversion under the guise of reformism,” he remarked.
“The people of Bangladesh have now clearly seen through this deception,” Nahid asserted, adding, “They have awakened in defense of truth and will no longer be deceived by pseudo-reformists or opportunists.”
Concluding his remarks, the NCP convener said, “The people of this country, who are the true sovereign authority under the almighty Allah, will never again allow dishonest, opportunistic, and morally bankrupt forces to rule over them.”
