BNP in breach of RPO provisions
JCD's delinking with national party seems a far cry
THE Bangladesh Nationalist Party, like other political parties registered with the Election Commission as a political party to take part in the 29th December parliamentary polls on the stated commitment towards fulfilling the provisions of Representation of People's Order as amended by the immediate past caretaker government. Some of these provisions specifically related to effectively delinking the national political parties from their pre-existing student wings. In terms of these all registered political parties are forbidden from having any front or affiliate or associate body among the students, teachers and the labour.
The students can have their own bodies but these would have their own constitution and work completely independently of the national political party and in separation from it. And only genuine and regular students can be its members. A member of a student group is, however, allowed to be a primary member of a national political party, if he/she so chooses. Which means that they can take interest and part in politics as citizens and future leaders of the country but totally delinked from his membership in a student organisation.
Furthermore, that the national political parties will have no affiliate body among students, teachers and labour will have to be incorporated in the party constitution as amended in the light of RPO and submitted to the EC by 25 July, 2009. It is upon this undertaking itself that the political party concerned was registered with the EC ahead of the election to be able to participate in the election and function as a political party.
The spirit and letter of the RPO provisions in question stand violated by the BNP's move announcing a 101-member new central committee of JCD with the party chief Begum Khaleda Zia having approved five office bearers of the same. The party chief has obviously violated the registration laws by announcing the new central committee and approving the names of the office bearers. She is in further breach of the provisions because the new leaders of the committee are not even students and none but students are eligible to be in a student body.
Her direct intervention in the student party often dissolving and recasting student committees has been a historical phenomenon. This time the expelled members of JCD themselves have criticised her of violating the RPO provisions. There is a message for her to heed.
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