The Washington Times has stated that they carried an article by Khaleda Zia on Jan 30 only after being certain that she had written it, the bdnews24.com reported yesterday. In an email, its Executive Editor David S Jackson said they were “confident in its authenticity”. “The article that appeared in The Washington Times was submitted to us by Mark Pursey, a London-based intermediary acting on behalf of Begum Khaleda Zia. We have been in touch with Mr. Pursey both before and after the publication of the article,” bdnews24.com has quoted the Washington Times Executive Editor to have said.
(But question remains whether the trading of blame for the suspension of GSP by the United States only the other day cannot be based on a 5-month old letter or article published in the globally known and read newspaper.)
Pursey is one of the partners of the British PR company BTP Advisers, a communications consultancy with a network of partners across Europe, Africa and emerging markets.
According to the institution’s website, he also has extensive polling and message creation experience, having worked on every UK general election campaign from 1992 onwards.
He was previously the Communications Officer for the worldwide Vodafone Group as well as Vice-President for Communications at Deutsche Asset Management.
After the US suspended Bangladesh’s preferential trade status on June 28, Khaleda told Parliament on Saturday that the Washington Times article was not written by her.
“Some are speaking about an article published in a foreign newspaper under my name. But I didn’t send any letter,” she had said.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who was present in Parliament during Khaleda’s speech, raised a copy of that article written, but Khaleda said, “It’s not written by me.”
The article titled “ZIA: The thankless role in saving democracy in Bangladesh” called upon the US and western nations to come forward to ‘save democracy’ in Bangladesh and that they should consider targeting travel and other sanctions.
Hasina insisted Khaleda indeed was the author saying, “There is a lot of similarity between that article and her speech today (Saturday).” But the US action in respect of GSP followed the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in April, three months after the publication of the said article.
“There is no use denying it. It says here – Khaleda Zia’s article, former Prime Minister and present Opposition Leader. This is available on the Internet,” Hasina said.
Khaleda had drawn immediate flak from the ruling party for the article. Some even said it amounted to sedition and threatened legal measures.
(Fact remains, politicians everywhere in the world use such languages to criticise each other. Former US President George W Bush for example had accused John Kerry, then his democratic rival in election, of outsourcing the security of the United States.)
A day after its publication, BNP leader Moudud Ahmed had said Khaleda had written the article to draw the attention of the US and other well-wishers of Bangladesh. “It was not to protect BNP … it was to guard democracy in the country,” he said.
The party’s spokesperson, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, too, had said she had written it to “highlight the current state of the country”, the bdnews24.com report said.
It however needs to be ascertained whether the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition were talking about the same letter.
