Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Dr Shafiqur Rahman on Sunday sent a blunt message to the ruling BNP: if it forgets its past and drifts toward fascism, his party will not stay quiet. He described the BNP’s position on the referendum verdict and constitutional reform as a “betrayal of the nation.”
Dr Shafiqur made the remarks at a discussion organised by the Amar Bangladesh (AB) Party at the Dhaka Reporters Unity on Sunday marking one year since the July National Charter was signed.
Other speakers at the event accused the BNP of ignoring the charter, retreating from reforms and compromising with hegemonic forces.
Speaking as Leader of the Opposition, he said the government had failed to win the cooperation of opposition parties and lacked the moral standing to ask for it.
The Jamaat chief said the opposition had offered to cooperate with the government but was turned away. “Neo-fascism, too, will fall,” he warned.
He said the BNP had been a victim of oppression until August 5, but had quickly forgotten that experience. “The BNP may change, but we will not. We will see the July Charter and the referendum implemented,” he said.
He accused the government of deceiving the public by failing to implement the charter and the referendum verdict, and said the “conspiracy against the nation” began when ruling party members announced they would take a separate oath as a party.
Referring to comments made in parliament, Dr Shafiqur said a senior figure had admitted to not understanding the four referendum questions.
“If he cannot understand four questions, how did the people understand the 31 points?” he asked, adding that the government treats citizens as fools and considers only itself wise.
Accusing the government of meddling in constitutional bodies, he said students first took to the streets to secure merit-based opportunity, and the Public Service Commission (PSC) is central to that promise.
After weakening one institution after another, he alleged, the government is now interfering with the PSC.
“The PSC is a constitutional body, not any minister’s family business,” he said, adding that no minister has the right to ask a PSC member to resign.
He also alleged efforts to fill key civil service posts with party loyalists, with benefits steered toward BNP members and affiliated bodies. He claimed remarks had even been made suggesting that development allocations for an area could depend on whether its voters back the government.
Dr Shafiqur said everyone, from a newborn to the elderly, contributes to the public purse directly or indirectly, and that the money of the poor is not kept separate from the rest. Politically discriminatory remarks about such funds, he said, are not merely indecent but “a crime against the state.”
He alleged that special allocations had gone to 208 constituencies represented by ruling party MPs, while no opposition MP received any.
“Did so many people lay down their lives for this discrimination?” he asked. The 2024 movement, he said, was meant to end old politics and begin a new political culture, but the country was being pulled back to the old ways.
Mocking the government’s policies, he said things had reached a point where a tax on buffaloes, and even payments for the grass they graze on, had entered the discussion.
Responding to government criticism of the opposition’s street movement, Dr Shafiqur said people were asking why the opposition was agitating instead of cooperating, and why it was prolonging the movement. Some so-called civil society members and intellectuals were repeating the same line, he said.
He alleged that the government was following in the footsteps of the previous authoritarian regime. The opposition would not stay silent, he said, and its MPs, elected despite what he called manipulation and irregularities, would act as watchdogs for the rights of the country’s 180 million people.
He said Jamaat had been offered various inducements and had “contemptuously rejected” them. The opposition, he declared, would stand “as firm as the Himalayas” against any attempt to deceive the nation.
“This movement is not for any particular party,” Dr Shafiqur said. He listed its aims as securing people’s rights, blocking the path to fascism, building a discrimination-free society and a humane Bangladesh, and leaving a safe, liveable country for future generations.
Citing the 2024 student-people uprising as inspiration, he said young people had shown that fascism can be brought down with patriotism and faith, even by those standing empty-handed on the streets. “That experience is both a lesson and an inspiration,” he said.
When fascism will fall is a matter of divine decree, he said, “but it will not happen by sitting at home.” He added that the success of others is the success of the country, and that the opposition’s aim is the welfare of the people.