Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) wants the next general elections within next December, the party tells the visiting US deputy assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia Nicole Chulick in a meeting today.
The meeting was held in the residence of the US Deputy Head of Mission on Wednesday afternoon.
A four member delegation of BNP led by the party’s Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir participated in the meeting.
Standing Committee member Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury briefed the journalists after the meeting. He said imposition of tariff was discussed during the meeting as export will be hampered if tariff cannot be set at a tolerable rate.
There was a long discussion regarding the election, said the BNP leader.
“The election will be held in December. We said it can even be held before December,” Amir Khosru said responding to a question.
The leaders of BNP also explained the reason why the party wants the election in earliest possible time.
He said if democratic order is not restored, many stalled decisions in and outside the country cannot be taken.
“These decisions can be taken easily if the government is an elected one and decision making gets easier if the government has the backing of the people,” he said.
Amir Khasru said people in and outside the country are waiting for the election.
“They (US delegation) inquired about the government's policy, what will be the policy of BNP and what will be our economic policy. We have told them in detail.”
The member of BNP’s Standing Committee also said the US representatives asked about all the reforms that have been done in Bangladesh in the past, the economic reforms that were done during the BNP regime, the political reforms, political reforms starting from multi-party democracy, free market economy to the judiciary, and the reforms that will be done in the future.
Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, who was the Commerce Minister of the BNP-led four-party alliance government, commented that the reciprocal tariffs imposed by the Donald Trump administration will not affect Bangladesh-US relations.
“We have talked about what the BNP can do in this regard,” he added.
He said the issue of Awami League was not brought up during the meeting.
Before the BNP, a delegation of NCP held a meeting with the visiting US delegation at the same venue.
Emerging from the meeting, NCP’s Coordinator Nahid Islam said, “We think the field administration is not working impartially. We have seen the administration is overlooking attacks on National Citizen’s Party leaders and activists in different places. We talked about these during our meeting.”
When asked about these allegations of the NCP leader, the BNP leader refused to make any comment.
BNP’s central Organising Secretary Shama Obaid and Media Cell member Shairul Kabir Khan were also present during the meeting.