Visible progress needed on trials, reforms before polls: NCP’s Akhtar

National Citizen Party (NCP) Member Secretary Akhtar Hossain has called on the interim government to once again demonstrate its ongoing initiatives to reform the state after Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus announced a timeframe for the general election.

Akhtar made the remarks on the July Proclamation and the chief advisor’s speech at a press conference at the NCP’s central offices on Wednesday.

Akhtar said, “The chief advisor mentioned in his address to the nation that deadline for the election is February. Before arranging the elections, the government has some other duties to fulfil.

“This government was formed with a reform mandate to bring the mass killers to justice and bring about qualitative changes in state structure. Therefore, justice and reforms must be demonstrated before the elections.”

Though he welcomed the July Proclamation, the NCP leader Akhtar says that some issues that were part of the public’s aspirations were missing from it.

He said, “We have reviewed the July Proclamation. We had presented some demands on certain issues to the government for a long time. Some of these issues are absent.”

“The anti-colonial struggle has been mentioned, but the partition of 1947 was not. If the Pilkhana massacre, the Shapla Chattar massacre, the judicial killings, the 2018 anti-quota movement, the Road Safety movement, the anti-violence movement after the Abrar Fahad murder, and the anti-Modi movement had been mentioned in this proclamation, it would have been complete.”

He added, “The proclamation states the number of martyrs as around 1,000. However, according to the UN report, we know that 1,400 people were martyred. The government has failed to determine the actual number of martyrs in the past one year.”

Instead of adding the July Proclamation to the preamble of the current constitution, it should be part of the basis for a new constitution, the NCP leader said.

“A new constitution is needed for the emergence of a new political community in Bangladesh. I demand that the July Proclamation be included in the preamble of the new constitution.”

The NCP has been calling for a new constitution through elections to a Constituent Assembly and the reforms agreed to by the parties in the proclamation should be implemented under the interim government through a Legal Framework Order or LFO, Akhtar said.