AL govt won’t allow movement: Ershad

The prime minister's special emissary HM Ershad on Saturday said the Awami League government would not allow any quarters to organise movement in the days ahead of the national elections.

Ershad, who heads AL ally Jatiya Party, said he may be part of an electoral alliance with the AL camp, if the principal opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) joins the 11th parliamentary polls later this year.

“I've asked the government to free those who were arrested in connection with the recent demonstration for safe road. The government is not releasing the arrested students. More protesters have been arrested [instead],” Ershad told newsmen at Rangpur Circuit House in his hometown of Ranpur.

Ershad is scheduled to make a five-day sojourn in Rangpur to celebrate Eid-ul-Azha, apart from meeting leaders and people in his political stronghold.

The former military ruler said, “I don’t know what the government is planning. But I think the government will not allow any group to wage movement.”

The JP leader said his party will field candidates in all 300 constituencies across the country should the BNP boycott the next elections.

Otherwise, he added, his party will once again form electoral alliance with the Awami League.

Ershad, who relinquished power in the face of students' and popular upheaval in 1990, had announced boycott of the 2014 general elections before he was declared elected member of parliament when he was kept in hospital.

The Jatiya Party chief expressed his confidence that his party would win 21 of the 22 parliamentary seats in Rangpur.