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Ex-Premiers assail Bangladesh government

DHAKA: The former Prime Minister, Khaleda Zia, alleged on Wednesday that the caretaker government would install a puppet government by stage-managing an “arranged election.”

Ms. Zia also accused the military-backed government of violating the Constitution repeatedly to cling on to power. Its popularity had fallen to “zero,” she added. Ms. Zia was speaking at a court hearing. Ms. Zia asked if the government was , then why was the country placed under a state of Emergency.

In her statement, Ms. Zia said a conspiracy was being hatched to make Bangladesh a vassal state by eliminating the nationalist and pro-Islamic forces. She said such a conspiracy would be resisted. The government was filing “false and concocted cases” against politicians, she said.

“They (the military-backed government) want to form a party with dalals (henchmen), who after winning the arranged election would give legitimacy to the government’s actions,” said Ms. Zia. The politics of splitting parties, including the BNP, had begun, she added.

Ms. Zia alleged that the January 11 episode — through which the present government assumed power after the promulgation of a state of Emergency — was staged to fulfil the “high ambitions of a handful of people and it has become crystal clear now to everybody after 16 months of the rule of this government.”

The former Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, has cast doubts about the fairness of the December general elections in the wake of the crackdown on political workers across the country. Media reports said nearly 20,000 people have been arrested in the past few days.

Ms. Hasina’s lawyers a court, which is trying one of her several corruption cases, that the country was heading towards a “state of confusion and confrontation” as political dialogues were being held on the one hand and political activists were being rounded up on the other.

The lawyers said Ms. Hasina wished the government would refrain from taking repressive measures. “The government should take lessons from the past… Otherwise, they will face the same fate the previous governments faced,” said Ms. Hasina in her statement.

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