Acclaimed academician Professor Shams Rahman lashed out at the founder of BNP party, General Ziaur Rahman, for staging a national vote of confidence in 1977 only “to solidify his hold on to state power” after running the country for 18 months under strict martial law as Bangladesh’s first military dictator.
Popularly known as "yes-no" vote, the referendum was marred by a very low turnout, yet the results were manipulated showing around 90% turnout with many centres saw the number of votes in favour of Zia surpassed total voters registered with those centres, said Prof Shams at a webinar.
Raising questions about the legitimacy centring the birth of Bangladesh’s Nationalist Party (BNP), Shams, who teaches at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, divulged that the party was founded with Zia at the helm in barracks, bearing telltale hallmarks of Pakistan’s repressive regime that unleashed a genocide in 1971.
“That BNP still remains in a denial mode and continues to glorify the mastermind of those darkest episodes as its founder even when the nation is celebrating fifty years of independence clearly puts a big question mark over the party’s commitment to the constitution”, he added.
In reference to the “notorious national referendum” that General Zia oversaw back in 1977, Professor Shams said “that shameful step served a big blow to the spirit of the country’s liberation war, tore into the country’s constitution and offered an olive branch for anti-liberation forces—radical elements.”
Within years into the country's liberation, the father of the nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was assassinated with most of his family members, but in the aftermath General Ziaur Rahman rose to the rank of president and rehabilitated the killers of Bangandhu.
“It is sheer irony that BNP still calls the referendum ‘a great exercise of democratic franchise’, but in reality no one permitted to campaign on the negative side and many opposition leaders still in jail, leaving little doubt on the outcome,” said Ajoy Das Gupta, a veteran journalist and researcher, addressing the webinar.
Dasgupta, an Ekushey Padak awardee, says the military rulers who had taken over and ruled Bangladesh for the next 15 years legitimised the pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami, introduced constitutional amendments that undermined the country's secular democratic polity, and finally declared Islam as the state religion of Bangladesh.
He said some parties like BNP and its ally, Jamaat-e-Islami, have tried to restore the "Pakistan military-fundamentalist model of radical Islam" but failed.