In a rally in the capital, Dhaka, hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis’ largest Islamist party supporters demanded a change to the electoral system.
The South Asian country is expected to turn in the polls next year as it approaches a jib after former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s ouster.
A seven-point demand was made on Saturday by Jamaat-e-Islami against Muhammad Yunus’ interim government to ensure free, fair, and peaceful elections, as well as essential reforms, and the issuance and implementation of a charter in response to the mass uprising last year.
The party added that it wants to use a proportional representation system in the election.
Prior to the rally, thousands of Jamaat-e-Islami supporters stayed the night on the Dhaka University campus.
The nine-month war ended when the Pakistani army surrendered to a joint force of India and Bangladesh on December 16, 1971, and they continued to stream towards Suhrawardy Udyan, a historical site.
Iqbal Hossain, 40, said, “We are here for a new Bangladesh, where Islam would be the guiding principle of governance, where good and honest people would rule the nation, and where there would be no corruption.”
“We will give our lives to this cause, if necessary.”
No bias, please.
Some demonstrators wore T-shirts with the party’s logo on them, while others wore headbands with the party’s name on them, and many others carried metal badges that resembled a scale, the party’s electoral symbol.
There were also many young, 20- and 30-year-old supporters.
This nation will not experience discrimination under Jamaat-e-Islami. Everyone will have their rights. Because we adhere to the holy book, the Quran, Mohidul Morsalin Sayem, a student, said.
“Nobody will be able to take control of our country if all the Islamist parties join hands in the near future,” said one spokesman.
Shafiqur Rahman, the party’s leader, stated that the goal of the country’s struggle in 2024 was to end “fascism,” but that this time it would be fought against corruption and extortion.
What will Bangladesh look like in the future? Another fight will occur, Rahman said, and we will do everything to win it.
Jamaat, which supported Pakistan in the country’s 1971 independence war, was outlawed after Bangladesh’s independence.
It later re-apparashed and recorded its best electoral performance since 1991, winning 18 seats.
In 2001, the party re-elected as a coalition government, but it was unable to gain significant popular support.
Top Jamaat-e-Islami leaders were executed or imprisoned on charges of crimes against humanity and other serious crimes in 1971 while Prime Minister Hasina was in power from 2009 until she fled to India after being toppled by student protests last year.
The party’s registration was restored last month, allowing its participation in the upcoming April elections.
Hasina’s Awami League party publicly criticized Yunus’s government for allowing Saturday’s rally in a statement on X.
The action, according to the statement, “is a stark betrayal of the national conscience and constitutes a brazen act of undermining millions of people, both dead and alive, who fought against the evil axis]in 1971.”
Source: Aljazeera
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