The war of words between the Awami League and the BNP over the latter’s search committee suggestion to the president has grown more hoarse.
The Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader has taken aim at his BNP counterpart Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on the issue.
Speaking at an event on Monday, Quader said, “I was stunned. Yesterday the BNP secretary general made a completely self-contradictory statement..”
His remarks follow Mirza Fakhrul lashing out at the Awami League after Quader had claimed that the BNP had proposed the name of former chief justice KM Hasan to be on the ‘Search Committee’ for the new EC.
The verbal spat between the two leaders started with Quader claiming on Sunday that despite raising a hullabaloo for a neutral search committee “BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia has proposed that former chief justice KM Hasan’s name be included in the search committee.”
“Wasn’t Mr Hasan the foreign affairs secretary of the BNP? So which is being partisan and which non-partisan?” he wondered when faced with talks of the BNP’s opposition to a partisan Election Commission.
In response, Mirza Fakhrul had wondered how the general secretary of the ruling party had come to know of what BNP had discussed with the president.
He then went on to say Quader’s claim about Hasan’s name being suggested by the BNP was a ‘white lie’.
On Monday, Quader said, “If no such suggestion was made then where is the question of breach of trust?”
“A guilty mind needs no accuser”, he said and took a jibe at Fakhrul saying, “Do we have to take help of the Bangabhaban to know the secretive talks of the BNP? The BNP is enough to reveal its own secrets,” he mocked.
Quader added, “Mr Fakhrul, do you absolutely trust the very ones who accompanied you to the discussion?”
He even had a word of advice for the BNP secretary general,. “In your own office in your presence, one calls another ‘a chum of the government side’. Learn to trust each other within the party first and then go out to attack others.”
He claimed the BNP, in its bid to make Justice Hasan the head of the caretaker government in 2006 had ‘increased’ his age from 65 to 67.
“How can there be no choice when such favourite people are alive?” he hit out at the BNP.
Revealing his own party’s stand on the much-talked about new EC formation, he said the Awami League only wants that someone who believes in the nation’s founding ideals be made to head the EC.
Source: Bd news24
