Zia to launch movement to oust Hasina government
By IANSSunday, May 9, 2010
DHAKA - Bangladesh’s opposition leader Khaleda Zia has said she would launch a movement May 19 to oust the Sheikh Hasina government.
Hasina signed pacts during her visits to China, Saudi Arabia and other countries, but it is the five pacts signed with India during her January visit to New Delhi that Zia says were “a sell out”.
She told a gathering of lawyers here Saturday that she won’t allow the the pacts to be implemented.
The pacts pertaining to exchange of criminals, information on militancy and terrorist activities and access to India of Bangladesh’s Chittagong and Mangla ports were against national security, she has earlier said.
People wanted a “change of government”, she said.
Zia and her Islamist allies lost badly to Hasina-led coalition in December 2008 parliamentary elections. She said this was “not a popular mandate”.
“This government has done nothing good in the last 16 months (of its tenure). So, a countrywide movement will be built to remove it,” she was quoted as saying in New Age Sunday.
Zia, a former prime minister who heads the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, said she always wanted to cooperate with the Awami League-led government.
“Still you (the government) have time. We will cooperate if you can do good for the country,” The Daily Star quoted her as saying.
