Lt Colonel (Retd) Muhammad Faruk Khan, Awami League Presidium Member:
If BNP is a responsible political party, it will join the 11th national parliamentary election. In fact, BNP is not even a political party – it is a party of criminals and terrorists. They believe that their way should be followed or else they destroy everything. If it is a political party, it will renounce such activities and come join the election.
They way BNP is crying, it is as if someone will come and save it. Its ambitions are baseless. If it wants to appeal to the people, it must work for it. Even the people can come to power if they wish. They should instead work towards that rather than criticizing the government. Our biggest challenge right now is to conserve democracy, because there are some factions in the nation, like BNP-Jamaat, who do not believe in it.
They instead believe in terrorism and lawlessness. Fulfilling the expectations of the people is also a massive challenge for us. Bangladesh is advancing forward at an incredible pace, to the point that people from 20-25 years ago could scarcely comprehend the level of development we have now. Ninety-five percent voters of my constituency have received access to electricity. The rest embarrass me for electricity. ‘Why isn’t the country’s internet capacity improving?’, ‘We now have 4G, but why has every village not gotten access to it’ – these are the challenges we face, which we are combating, and quite successfully so. Brining BNP into the election is no big deal for Awami League. It is BNP’s political duty to come forward for the election. If it considers itself as a political party, it has a duty to appeal to the people and work for that mandate. Based on an interview by Ashiq Rahman, translated by Abrar Hussain