Bangabandhu Killing
Zia knew about plan
Claims Prof Moinul Islam
Late president Ziaur Rahman knew beforehand about the disgruntled army officers' blueprint for the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975, said a Chittagong University teacher yesterday at this year's Bangabangdhu memorial speech.
But Zia did not disclose the plot for it was his dream to be sworn in as president, said the economics department teacher, Prof Moinul Islam.
The speech, “Social Transformation and Political Change of Bangladesh”, was organised by Bangladesh Foundation for Development Research in the capital's Bangladesh National Museum.
“...and after 1975, the autocratic ruler Zia changed the country's political ideology to cement his stay in power. For this he introduced the politics of religious fundamentalism and restored the ideology of communalism, like in Pakistan,” said Prof Moinul.
After Zia's death, autocratic ruler HM Ershad and BNP, with some religion-based political parties, practiced the Pakistani ideologies for a long time, which ultimately gave the ideologies a strong position in the country, he added.
“We have even seen the Awami League-led government retaining Islam as state religion and keeping secularism through the constitution's fifteenth amendment to attain political benefit,” he said.
He said the two major political parties were internally still practicing autocracy each time they came to power.
“In every term, their party chief practiced a kind of dictatorship in and outside their parties. Even the ruling party lawmakers and senior leaders could not act by themselves or challenge any of the chief's decisions in running the government,” he said.
Addressing the programme, Shamsuzzaman Khan, a Board of Governance member of the foundation, said, “Some parts of the speech do not match our foundation's ideology.”
“As we usually do not interfere in the memorial speech we arrange every year, this speech cannot be counted as our opinion,” said the director general of Bangla Academy, adding, “It would have been better if the speaker talked about political economy.”
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