Thaindian News

Dhaka, July 25 (IANS) Muffled complaints of absence of intra-party democracy surfaced as Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was elected president of the country’s ruling Awami League for the seventh time, media reports here said Saturday.
Hasina and her hand-picked general secretary Syed Ashraful Islam were elected without a contest Friday at the 20th national council meeting of the party that country’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman helped establish during the Pakistan era.

After the council meeting, “some of the councillors, who had been cheering on the bandwagon of complacency during the session, were, however, seen and heard complaining about a lack of democracy in the process of electing the party leadership”, said The Daily Star newspaper.

The council elected Friday was vested with the authority to choose leaders for 45 posts in the ruling party’s 73-member central working committee, the highest decision-making forum.

The party constitution empowers the president to choose the remaining 26 members of the working committee.

The council’s chief election commissioner M.A. Mannan told the newspaper that the commission was ready to hold elections to other posts but nobody filed for candidacy.

Saddled with the prime ministership since January, Hasina sought to usher in a new party leadership.

“I’ve been working as the party chief for the last 28 years. I want to see new leadership and I will provide all out cooperation to them,” Hasina was quoted as saying by a councillor.

But councillors did not agree with Hasina’s proposal and requested her not to quit the party’s helm.

Hasina was first elected president of the party in 1980 while she was living abroad. She returned home in 1981 and has been leading the Awami League since then.

Her political graph matches that of her arch rival and current opposition leader Khaleda Zia, who took over the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in 1981 after her husband and then president Ziaur Rahman was killed in a military putsch.

The two have dominated the Bangladesh political scene since 1981.

In a related development, H.M. Ershad, the country’s longest-serving ruler (1982-90), declared himself president for lifetime of his Jatiya Party Friday.

“From today there is no need for an acting chairman and I want to be the chairman of the party until death,” said Ershad, who presided over the council of his party.