Khaleda threatens agitation against Hasina government

DHAKA - Bangladesh’s opposition leader Khaleda Zia has said she would resume agitation against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government to protect the interest of the country.

“Certainly after Eid, we must launch movement to protect the interest of the people and the country…Now there is no other alternative but movement,” she was quoted as saying by the Daily Star.

Zia, who was evicted last week from a government house, has vowed to “take to the people” the policies of her arch political rival who, she says, has failed to provide basic amenities.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader reiterated her demand Wednesday that the government scrap the “anti-national treaties” the prime minister signed during visit to India in January and accused Hasina of “protecting foreign interests”.

On the 23-month-old Hasina government’s “misdeeds, failures and wrong steps”, Zia, 64, said the government should quit power shouldering the responsibility of failures, “otherwise the country will step back 40 years”.

Zia, a two-term prime minister, lost to Hasina in the December 2008 parliamentary polls.

Her two sons are living in exile abroad and the Hasina government is moving courts to get them home to face trial on graft charges.

Zia was evicted Nov 13 from the government house which was given to her after her husband’s assassination in 1981. The Hasina government told the court the allotment was illegal.