11-30-06, 10:53 am
The Political Department of the Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB), meeting on November 23, sharply criticized the President and Chief Advisor's midnight speech to the nation on November 22 as a 'deceitful maneuver' by the BNP-Jamat-led 4-party alliance. The CPB stated that the people of the country should not consider the steps declared by the President in his address as a meaningful victory in the ongoing struggle for a free and fair election.
In a resolution adopted at the meeting of its Political Department, the CPB noted that despite granting a 3-month leave to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) M.A. Aziz, the President has accepted several conditions regarding the CEC's leave, including his continuous presence in Dhaka during this period. By removing the CEC, he has tried to convince the people that he has now fulfilled the people's demands. However, the President has at the same time actually concentrated in his own hands all the power and authority of the President, Chief Advisor and Election Commission.
Moreover, he has also kept under his own authority and jurisdiction the power to appoint two new Election Commissioners while denying the right of the other 10 Advisors to have any say regarding the appointments. These steps have once again exposed his partisan bias in favor of BNP-Jamat. There is also a very real question as to whether such steps are constitutional. Thus, the President’s speech cannot be considered a meaningful victory for the peoples’ struggle.
Presided over by CPB General Secretary Mujahidul Islam Selim, the meeting also stated that the President had taken the opportunity to perform this 'deceitful maneuver' by taking advantage of the 14-party alliance's erroneous tactic of reducing the entire movement for a free and fair election to a one-point demand for the removal of Justices K. M. Hasan and M. A. Aziz. In criticizing the President's speech, the CPB said that instead of attacking the arrogant inflexibility and rigidity of the Chief Election Commissioner, the President had instead blamed 'agitating opposition forces' and the people in what sounded like a standard propaganda speech from the BNP-Jamat party leadership.
The CBC said that the President's proposal to take some limited steps toward an election would never ensure that the elections are free and fair and removed from the power of money and political muscle. As proposed by the President, the CPB stated, there could never be an 'acceptable and meaningful' election, without even a 'neutral referee' to conduct it.
The CPB also reiterated that in order to conduct a free and fair election, forceful steps must be taken against the nation’s criminal godfathers, loan defaulters, and war criminals, along with the manipulations of government bureaucrats and attempts at election rigging. Also vitally necessary were effective measures to curtail the use of money power, which has degraded the election process into 'election commerce.' The CPB said that it will continue to struggle for full implementation of its 53-point charter of demands, a comprehensive program for radical election reform that will ensure genuinely free and fair elections.
The Party has declared a nationwide demonstration on November 30 to demand the immediate implementation of its 53-point charter of electoral reforms and to call for a fundamental transformation in the country's political orientation, the principal message of the demonstration will be: 'Change the Government AND Change the Politics.'
