The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has come under criticism on social media following its recent “bluff” over the state of the country's forex reserve amid the ongoing austerity measures to deal with global headwinds.
Appearing in a public event, its secretary Mirza Fakrul Islam Alamgir purportedly sounded an alarm with lowering down reserve at $16 billion, almost turning a blind eye to the reality on ground as the reserve stand over $ 39 billion.
In a prompt response to this hoax, Awami League’s verified Facebook page posted a comment.
“It seems BNP survives on lies while this white lie is not one off the hook comment rather an well designed attempt to rake up confusion in public minds,” reads the post.
And in real terms such out of sorts remarks are nothing new from BNP.
Weeks back the party stalwarts faced scathing attacks from netizens after its stalwart attempted to proliferate the number of people living below poverty line at 42.9%, in a stark contrast to research figures as leading global bodies put it at 11.9%.
The party’s credibility suffered the biggest blow in recent times when from its verified page it called the construction of the country’s largest multipurpose bridge as “faulty”.
“ Nuts and bolts from the bridge can be unscrewed with bare hands,” reads a post that the party leaders still found it necessary to keep it posted paying no heed to “science defying” outcry.
In reality, two activists aligned with the pro BNP alliance have been arrested for removing some parts from the newly constructed bridge.
A number of leading engineering magazines have already called this 6.1 km bridge over a river like Padma, in terms of strong current ranks only after Amazon, a marvel of construction.
Responding to a claim made by BNP about the country's foreign exchange reserve, ruling Awami League from its verified Facebook account remarked that rumor is like Oxygen that BNP lives on.
The post came hot on the heels of the observation by Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, who estimated the forex reserve to be 'not more than 16 billion dollar'.
Reverting to the claim, the social media post by Awami League wrote, "While the reserve of Bangladesh has settled on 40 billion dollars, Mirza Fakhrul made this sudden remark that it won't be more than 16 billion. Perhaps his motive was to reduce the gap between 2 billion USD during BNP's tenure and 40 billion dollars now. Mirza Fakhrul and his people do politics by hinging on rumors and lies."
"Spreading rumors is the primary task of BNP leaders," said the post, adding that no conscientious citizen of this country can support these rumor preachers.