Representatives of the civil society have suggested postponing the 10th parliamentary election set to take place on Jan 5 to give a chance to reconciliation.At a roundtable in capital Dhaka on Friday, all of them unanimously agreed that no positive result would come from the elections if the government holds it without the Opposition.
However, leaders of both the ruling and Opposition alliances, who attended the meeting, blamed each other for the current political impasse.
Civil society leaders urged the two major political parties – Awami League and BNP – to come to an agreement, otherwise they feared that an undemocratic force may rise.
The ruling party have already threatened to resist the BNP’s March for Democracy programmes if any act of violence or sabotage took place.
As the two parties are preparing for a showdown on Sunday, tension has gripped the people even as transports from across the country to Dhaka have been cut off allegedly following administrative orders.
Fifty-four people attended the four-hour-long roundtable on ‘Bangladesh in crisis, thoughts of civilians’ at a hotel in the capital. Four organisations – Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK), Sushashoner Jonne Nagorik (Sujon) and Transparency International, Bangladesh (TIB) jointly organised it.-bdnews24.com
