BNP now looking for the ways of darkness: PM

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today (Jan 16) said BNP did not participate in the January 7 election in fear of defeat and has been searching for dark ways to assume power being rejected by the people time and again.

"They know they are boycotted by the people. That is why, they don't want to take part in the election. So, they are searching for different ways to go to regain power by destroying the electoral process. They are now looking for the ways of darkness bypassing the path of light which is election," she said.

The Prime Minister was addressing expatriate Awami League leaders and activists at her official Ganabhaban residence here.

Sheikh Hasina asked the expatriates to stay alert against conspiracies saying that the plots are still being hatched.

"They (BNP-Jamaat clique) are now demanding to cancel the election," she said.

Referring to 2008 parliamentary election, the premier said the BNP-Jamaat alliance got only 30 seats while the AL alone bagged 233 seats.

"Since then, they don't want any election. They have been setting fire on buses, launches, trains and burning people to death. The more they do terrorist activities and arson violence, the more the people reject them," she said.

Sheikh Hasina came down heavily on the BNP as they have been doing politics with their party office.

"They lock their office and then unlock it. They have lost the keys of their office and ways also and they are now becoming pedestrians of the lost way," she said.

BNP has one virtue and that is arson terrorism, she said.

The premier said BNP are skilled to create trap to kill people referring to withdraw fishplates of the railway track in which several persons were killed.

She said the BNP had distributed leaflets among the people urging people to boycott the election alongside with conducting the violence.

But, the people have casted their balloting spontaneously rejecting their plea to not going to polling centres.

"Not only this time (January 7 election), the people have rejected them time and again. They did not take part in the election fearing to lose," she said.

The Prime Minister thanked the people as they voted spontaneously and sent her party to power again.

She continued participation of women in large numbers in the election a great achievement of the AL awareness campaign to make people understand that casting votes is their constitutional and civic rights.

PM said there is no scarcity of food, reached electricity to every house and transformed Bangladesh into a digital Bangladesh since the Awami League had been in power in the last 15 years.

Now, the people of Bangladesh want more developed and improved life.

"We will turn Bangladesh into a poverty and hunger free developed and prosperous Bangladesh by 2041 in the spirit of the Liberation War as envisioned by the Father of the Nation," she said.