Hasina will decide who forms the opposition: Quader

Sheikh Hasina, who has secured a record fifth term as prime minister, will decide who forms the opposition in the next parliament, Obaidul Quader has said amid speculations. 

The general secretary of the ruling Awami League faced questions about the matter at a press conference at its Dhaka District unit office in Tejgaon on Monday, a day after the party’s landslide victory in the election.  

The Election Commission has announced the results of 298 constituencies, out of which the Awami League has won 222. 

Independent candidates, almost all of whom are Awami League leaders, won the second highest number of seats with 62. 

The Jatiya Party, the official opposition in the past two parliaments, won only 11 seats. They even lost over half of the 26 seats the Awami League had ceded to them in a seat-sharing deal. 

Two members of the 14-Party Alliance - the Workers Party and JaSaD – won one seat each. The Kalyan Party, once in an alliance with the BNP, took one seat. 

The BNP’s boycott, the upsets caused by the Awami League’s independents and the meagre number of seats won by Jatiya Party have brought forth the question: who will be the opposition in parliament?    

“The leader of the House, meaning the next prime minister, will decide the matter,” Quader said. 

He criticised the BNP for boycotting the election, saying that they now have to wait for the next five years to have their representatives in parliament. 

Mentioning convictions of BNP Acting Chairman Tarique Rahman on corruption and money-laundering charges, he criticised senior BNP leaders, such as Abdul Moyeen Khan, for following a “criminal”.     

“I feel ashamed as a politician when I see wise people like Dr Moyeen Khan lose their conscience and continue falsifying by becoming a subordinate to such a criminal [Tarique],” he said.