Shawdesh Desk:

The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party senior joint secretary general, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, on Sunday termed the next general election ‘dummy election’ and alleged that the Awami League government was spending the money they had looted from the people of the country.

‘The Awami League government looted the hard-earned money of the country’s people, siphoned it off abroad and now they are spending the money in the dummy election,’ the BNP leader alleged while addressing a short rally after a procession in Cumilla supporting Sunday’s blockade and the party’s non-cooperation movement.

Rizvi led the procession on Dhaka-Chattogram highway and the procession met in a short rally in Chandina Gobindapur bus stand area in Comilla in the morning.

Rizvi, referring to non-government think tank CPD’s finding that a total of Tk 92,261 crore was looted from the banking sector through irregularities in 15 years of the Awami League government, said that the money taken out of the bank sector was more than 12 per cent of the budget for the current fiscal year.

Budget deficit could have been easily possible with the looted money, he said.

He alleged that the the Awami League government was going to hold a one-sided ‘dummy election’, keeping opposition political parties aside.

The country’s people are staging street protests demanding election under a caretaker government and the democratic countries were urging a free, fair and neutral election participated by all the parties in Bangladesh.

‘They (AL) themselves are carrying out sabotage and setting fire to vehicles in a planned way to blame the opposition parties that are staging protests for the restoration of democracy. This is an old habit of Awami League,’ he alleged.

BNP’s health affairs secretary Md Rafiqul Islam and mass education affairs secretary Selim Bhuiyan, among others, were present.