Bangladesh's government-opposition dialogue to begin

Bangladesh's ruling and opposition parties' planned dialogue, which suffered an initial shock following disputes over the venue, will begin Thursday at parliament house on the electoral reforms.

The talks will be held between general secretaries of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the main opposition Awami League (AL) as the league has been demanding reforms on the caretaker government system and the Election Commission, including removal of Chief Election Commissioner MA Aziz as he made himself controversial during update of the existing voter list, and three of his deputies.

"We are sitting tomorrow at the parliament house for the talks. We have fixed the timing of the talks. We will sit on Thursday morning," AL General Secretary Abdul Jalil said Wednesday.

The main opposition-led 14 party left-leaning combine had been agitating for the last 18 months to force the government to go for the reforms as the man Justice KM Hasan, who will head the caretaker administration to conduct the national polls next January, was once a BNP man.

The opposition combine had threatened to boycott the voting and said they would not allow the government to hold the elections unless the reforms were done.

The planned dialogue suffered an initial shock Tuesday, the day on which it was scheduled to be held, over a dispute on the venue. Jalil said the talks might be at the parliament house, but BNP Secretary General Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan proposed the national guest house Padma.

Many of the politicians of the country, diplomats and civil society members were hopeful about the talks but some intellectuals and political thinkers were skeptic about the prospect of the talks.

They said the government, which planted its men to be in the caretaker administration over the years, will not budge. So the success of the talks will be a far cry.

The four-party Islamist alliance government of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia will hand over power to a non-partisan caretaker government in October. The caretaker government will supervise the national elections in January next year.

Source: Xinhua