Bangladesh Islamists: Jamaat-e-Islami stage mega rally to challenge old ally BNP
Bangladesh's biggest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami on Saturday held its first-ever stand-alone grand rally in Dhaka amid efforts to undermine secular character of the country and bring theocracy into power.The JeI last staged a grand rally in Paltan Maidan in the then East Pakistan ahead of the 1970 elections.
The Saturday's rally was chaired by the party's Ameer Shafiqur Rahman. He warned party supporters that Bangladesh might witness further violent struggle to keep it on the right track.
In an oblique reference to Awami League Rahman said, 'From 28 October 2006, onward, all those responsible for different politically motivated 'massacres', including that of deaths of army officers in the then paramilitary BDR border guard force and the events of July 2024, must be tried on the soil of Bangladesh." The JeI which worked against independence of Bangladesh was completely banned by the Awami League days ahead of Sheikh Hasina's ouster. The interim regime led by Professor Muhammad Yunus later lifted the ban.
At the rally, Rahman said that the party would now spearhead a movement against corruption and extortion. JeI's show of strength may pit it against its long-term ally BNP.If voted to power, no lawmaker or minister associated with the party would accept government plots and tax-exempt vehicles or personally handle public funds, he claimed. One of the major agendas of the party is to wage a campaign to introduce a proportional representation (PR) system in the national election.Senior party leader Nayeb-e-Ameer Abdullah Mohammad Taher told the rally that elections under the PR system were the most appropriate method in the current political context. JeI's track record in general elections has been patchy as the party could never win a decent number of seats even when in alliance with BNP.BNP is opposed to the PR system. Several other Islamist parties and leaders of the student-led National Citizen Party (NCP) attended the rally. Rahman, 66, collapsed twice while addressing the rally and was later hospitalised, according to party leaders.
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