Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has been spending millions of dollars in a number of Western countries including the United States with a very ridiculous demand of holding the 2024 general elections in Bangladesh under the “direct supervision” of the US and Britain. In case the Western nations are unwilling to meddle into domestic affairs of Bangladesh, BNP is pressing the key policymakers in the Western nations to exert pressure on ruling Awami League for holding the 2024 general elections under a “caretaker government”. While BNP is having hallucination of returning to power holding fingers of their gods in the Western nations, they too don’t realize a plain math – none of the foreign masters or foreign gods will ever succeed in planting a government in a country like Bangladesh. They must realize – Bangladesh is not Afghanistan. Moreover, currently BNP is being led by its Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir. Meaning, he is the de facto leader of the party in absence of Khaleda Zia, who currently is serving rigorous imprisonment in corruption case and her son Tarique Rahman is a convicted fugitive. Even if the president pardons Khaleda Zia tomorrow morning, she will not be eligible to participate in the 2024 elections, while her son, Tarique Rahman on returning to Bangladesh shall have to land in jail and wait until he gets bail. Even after getting released from the prison on bail, Tarique Rahman shall be legally barred from participating the in 2024 elections. Meaning, for BNP, this party will suffer from leadership vacuum once it decides to join in the election process.
Another important factor needs to be stated. BNP’s second-in-command Tarique Rahman is infamous for selling party nominations to various individuals in exchange for cash. During the 2018 general elections, one of the key reasons behind BNP’s not succeeding in even getting 10 seats was the result of Tarique Rahman’s corruption related to nominations. This time again, he will love to make tons of cash by selling nominations to unfit candidates by depriving eligible leaders of his own party. To Tarique Rahman, money is the only priority, while he merely cares about political future of his own party. Furthermore, after spending more than fifteen years abroad, Tarique Rahman may not be genuinely interested in returning to Bangladesh and endure pains and agonies alongside his party comrades. He would rather love to enjoy privileges of being the second-most powerful figure in BNP sitting in luxury in London. He may even become the chairperson of the party after the demise of Khaleda Zia, he will never opt for returning to Bangladesh as he is willing to eat the fruits of the party sitting thousands of miles away from Bangladesh, but he definitely is not interested in making sacrifices for the party.
Yes, Tarique Rahman will return to Bangladesh only if BNP returns to power. In that case, he would certainly re-establish another Hawa Bhaban along with his friends and buddies and resume the old habit of making tons of money through corruption, nepotism and numerous forms of financial misdeeds.
In my opinion, Tarique Rahman is the biggest liability for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Unless it can get rid of this extremely greedy individual without any morale, for BNP, only a free and fair election would produce a big zero. Hopefully, leaders of BNP will go for soul-searching and prove my above comments wrong.
