Dhaka – A day after rolling out an alternative polls-time government formula, opposition BNP on Tuesday sent a letter to Awami League seeking initiatives from the ruling party to arrange dialogue over the issue.A BNP delegation, led by opposition chief whip Zainul Abdin Farroque, went to Awami League general secretary Syed Ashraful Islam’s Minto Road residence at about 11.30 am and handed over the letter to him on behalf of BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.
Later, at about 11.38 am, Syed Ashraf phoned Fakhrul and thanked him for sending the letter.
Fakhrul was in a press conference at the party chairperson’s Gulshan office when he received the phone call from his Awami League counterpart. “We’ve come forward and now we hope you’ll also come up and take it up sincerity,” Fakhrul told Ashraf over phone.
Ashraf then told Fakrul that he was going to Dinajpur with the Prime Minister and he will carry the letter to her.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was learned to have told the Cabinet meeting on Monday that she herself would talk to opposition leader Khaldea Zia over the polls-time government. The Prime Minister is expected to call Khaleda Zia anytime today, the source said.
The ice in the country’s long-drawn political crisis started melting after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in her address to the nation on Friday, offered to form an all-party government to oversee the next general election and sought names from the opposition to accommodate them in the interim administration.
Later, on Monday, opposition leader Khaleda Zia came up with her own polls-time government formula, and proposed forming a non-partisan interim government headed by a respected person to be chosen by a consensus by the ruling and opposition camps. – UNB
