The interim government in Bangladesh has announced that it will prepare a “proclamation of July uprising”, a day after it distanced itself from a proposed declaration with an identical title by the anti-discrimination students movement that led to the ouster of then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina four months ago.
“We hope within a few days the proclamation will be prepared with the participation and consensus of all and presented before the nation,” Shafiqul Alam, media secretary to the chief adviser of the interim government of Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus, said in a midnight news conference on Monday.
Addressing reporters in front of Yunus’s official residence, Jamuna, Alam said the declaration would be based on the views of all participating students, political parties and stakeholders, including the anti-discrimination students movement that led to the ouster of Hasina’s Awami League regime on August 5.
Alam said the government took the initiative to prepare the proposed charter to “consolidate the people’s unity, anti-fascist spirit and desire for state reform developed through the July uprising”.
The anti-discrimination students movement along with the National Citizens Committee, another grouping led by the students, two days ago in a surprise development said it would announce the proclamation of the July uprising on Tuesday afternoon at Dhaka’s Central Shaheed Minar.
However, the students’ platform hurriedly called an emergency meeting around 1.30am on Tuesday and told the media that instead of the proclamation they would rather stage a “march for unity” at the same venue and time.
“The Mujibist ’72 Constitution will be buried (in the proclamation) in the very place where the one-point declaration was made during the July uprising,” the platform’s convener Hasnat Abdullah told the media on December 29.
Abdullah at that time said that “Indian aggression was initiated through the principles of the 1972 Constitution (and) the proclamation will make it clear how the Mujibist Constitution destroyed the aspirations of the people and exactly how we want to replace it”.
The platform leader said the proclamation was expected to declare “irrelevant” the deposed premier’s “Nazi Awami League” in Bangladesh as well.
The 1972 Constitution was framed a year after the emergence of independent Bangladesh by representatives elected in the 1970 elections in line with their “mandate” as “Constituent Assembly” members with Awami League under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman gaining an absolute majority.
However, Pakistan’s then military junta under General Yahya Khan eventually launched a sudden army crackdown leading to the Liberation War.
The interim government visibly distanced itself from the “proclamation” with Yunus’s media secretary saying “the government has nothing to do with it” and “wants to see it (proclamation) as ‘private initiative’”.
But some leaders of ex-premier Khaleda Zia’s BNP sharply reacted to the proposal with its highest policy-making standing committee member Mirza Abbas saying the Constitution was written in 1972 at the cost of the blood of three million martyrs.
“As your seniors, we feel disappointed when you (student movement leaders) say the Constitution should be buried. If there is anything bad in the Constitution, it can be amended,” he told reporters.
Yunus tribute to Singh
Muhammad Yunus on Tuesday visited India’s High Commission in Dhaka and paid tribute to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
“Professor Yunus visited the Indian High Commission in Dhaka and placed a floral wreath at the portrait of the late Indian Prime Minister. He also wrote a message in the condolence book opened at the High Commission,” the chief adviser’s media wing said in a statement.
