Mirza Fakhrul gets BNP’s nomination for presidency

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has chosen the party’s Secretary General, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, as its nominee for the presidency.

BNP Chairman and Prime Minister Tarique Rahman finalised Mirza Fakhrul’s candidacy at a meeting with senior party leaders at the Secretariat Thursday afternoon.

Following the meeting, the party’s Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi announced Mirza Fakhrul’s nomination for the presidency.

Mirza Fakhrul’s nomination paper will be submitted to the election commission shortly. Meanwhile, Mirza Fakhrul has resigned as the BNP secretary general.

Mirza Fakhrul became the acting secretary general of BNP in 2011. He was formally appointed secretary general at the party’s national council in 2016. Over this long period, he emerged as one of the BNP’s top leaders.

In particular, he played a key leadership role throughout the period when the party’s top two leaders, Khaleda Zia and Tarique Rahman, were respectively imprisoned and in exile in London.

During the Awami League government’s tenure, Mirza Fakhrul was jailed six times. He led the party in the face of various forms of persecution and adversity under the previous government. He became known as a widely accepted leader in politics.

Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir was elected a member of parliament from the Thakurgaon-1 constituency in the 13th parliamentary election. He was subsequently appointed Minister for Local Government, Rural Development and Co-operatives in Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s government.

On 24 July, Md Sahabuddin, who had been elected president with the nomination of the Awami League, whose activities are now banned after it was ousted from power following the student-people uprising, resigned.

Speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmad is serving as acting president. Under the Constitution, a new president must be elected within 90 days of the office becoming vacant.

According to the election schedule announced by the Election Commission, presidential candidates must submit their nomination papers by 4:00 pm today. The nominations will then be scrutinised.

The last day for withdrawal of candidacies is 18 August. If more than one candidate remains after that, voting for the presidency will be held on 20 August.

The 11-party alliance led by Jamaat-e-Islami has nominated Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Chairman Colonel (retd) Oli Ahmad as its presidential candidate. Colonel Oli’s nomination paper was submitted at around 11:00 am today.

If no candidate withdraws their candidacy, a presidential election involving a vote will be held after nearly 35 years. The last presidential election involving a vote was held in 1991.

Since then, seven presidents have been elected unopposed from the ruling party. No opposition party nominated a candidate for the presidency during this period.

According to the Constitution, the president is elected by votes cast by members of parliament. The BNP currently holds more than a two-thirds majority in the Jatiya Sangsad. Meanwhile, the opposition parties, including Jamaat, have 90 members, including reserved women’s seats.

As a result, the victory of the BNP-backed candidate in the vote is largely assured. In that case, it is almost certain that Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir will be elected the country’s 23rd president.