The Awami League presidium at a meeting on Tuesday decided to contest the forthcoming parliamentary elections abiding by some of the strict rules of the prevailing state of emergency in a redefined form.
   ‘The issue of the state of emergency will not create problems for the elections if the government only rename the Emergency Powers Rules’, AL’s acting general secretary Syed Ashraful Islam said after the three-hour long presidium meeting.
   He suggested that the government should convert the rules in the current emergency law into general rules adding that some sections of the emergency rules could be used for holding free and fair elections.
   ‘If these rules are enforced in the name of emergency law, some parties will find an excuse for boycotting the elections’, Ashraful said at the Gulshan residence of acting AL president Zillur Rahman.
   The Awami League will set free all front organisations, a decision the party’s central working committee will finalise at a meeting slated for October 11.
   ’We will have no front organisations. The matter will be finalised at the central working committee meeting on October 11’, Ashraful said. He said the associate organisations will run independent of Awami League’s influence and make decisions on their own.
   The move comes in line with the new electoral laws that have made it mandatory for political parties to sever links with front organisations in order to register with the Election Commission. Ashraful would not say whether the party would dismantle its overseas wings.
   He expressed the party’s objection to the latest amendment to the Representation of People (amendment) Ordinance 2008 that gives the Election Commission sweeping powers to cancel anybody’s candidature at the last moment.
   The AL general secretary also said they would collect registration forms from the EC secretariat today. The working committee meeting on Saturday will amend the party constitution for registration with the EC.
   The party will also register its objection to local observers monitoring the polls. It will write to the donors asking them not to provide the local poll observers with funds, he said.
   Replying to a question, Ashraful said that after finalising the issue of the ‘grand alliance’, they would focus on nomination. He said the party’s draft manifesto had been prepared. The working committee in its meeting will approve the manifesto with some changes. Ashraful said party chief Sheikh Hasina, now on parole and receiving treatment in the United States, had told them that she might return home on October 26. He expressed concern for security of the former prime minister.
    The Awami League, Ashraful said, demands that Hasina is provided with security similar to the head of government.
   Party presidium members Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury, Abdur Razzak, Tofail Ahmed and Matia Chowdhury, Sheikh Fazlul Karim Selim, chairman of the party’s election steering committee HT Imam and party information and research secretary Nooh-ul Alam Lenin were present.

Source: New Age