{"id":7474,"date":"2018-02-20T23:30:56","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T23:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/?p=7474"},"modified":"2018-02-20T23:30:56","modified_gmt":"2018-02-20T23:30:56","slug":"bangladesh-election-will-take-place-as-scheduled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/bangladesh-election-will-take-place-as-scheduled\/","title":{"rendered":"Bangladesh election will take place as scheduled"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-782\" src=\"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Hasina.jpg\" alt=\"Hasina\" width=\"297\" height=\"172\" \/>Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said on Monday that her government will hold a general election by the end of this year, as scheduled.<br \/>\n\u201cThe election will take place on time and the people will exercise their voting rights,\u201d Hasina said.<br \/>\nThe prime minister was speaking at a press conference on her return home from an official visit to Italy and the Vatican.<br \/>\nHasina addressed threats from the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) that it will boycott the election unless its chairperson, Begum Khaleda Zia, is released from prison.<br \/>\nZia \u2014 who was herself prime minister of Bangladesh from 1991 to 1996 and from 2001 to 2006 \u2014 was sentenced to five years in jail for embezzlement on Feb. 8.<br \/>\nHasina was keen to stress that the government had nothing to do with Zia\u2019s sentence.<br \/>\n\u201cThe court has awarded imprisonment to Zia,\u201d she said. \u201cOur government did not dictate the verdict. The case was not even filed by the ruling party. It was filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission during the previous caretaker government.\u201d<br \/>\nHasina also said that the BNP was free to boycott the upcoming election, as it did the last one.<br \/>\n\u201cElections are a democratic right of the people,\u201d she said. \u201cIf (the BNP doesn\u2019t) participate in the election, we have nothing to do (with that decision). Here, we have a multi-party democracy.\u201d<br \/>\nZia\u2019s adviser, the former MP Joynal Abedin Faruk, however, believes that such a scenario would be an embarrassment to Hasina and her government both nationally and internationally.<br \/>\n\u201cOur chairperson is in prison now. Right at this moment our target is to set her free through a legal process,\u201d he said, adding: \u201cThe BNP will not take part in any election without Begum Zia.\u201d<br \/>\nProfessor Ataur Rahman, a political analyst and president of the Bangladesh Political Science Association, believes Hasina and her party will do their utmost to ensure the BNP take part in the election.<br \/>\n\u201cI definitely believe there will be a way out,\u201d he told Arab News. \u201cI believe there will be a positive result. The government will want to bring the BNP into the election process, but after weakening (its) political strength.\u201d<br \/>\nHe added that the BNP would want to \u201ckeep its existence as a political party,\u201d and would not \u201cwaste this chance.\u201d<br \/>\nBNP lawyers said on Monday that they would file a petition for bail for Zia on Tuesday, and they expected it to be granted soon.<\/p>\n<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\r\n<script>(function(d, s, id) {\r\n  var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];\r\n  if (d.getElementById(id)) return;\r\n  js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;\r\n  js.src = \"\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_GB\/all.js#xfbml=1\";\r\n  fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);\r\n}(document, \"script\", \"facebook-jssdk\"));<\/script>\r\n <fb:comments href=\"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/bangladesh-election-will-take-place-as-scheduled\/\" font=\"arial\" num_posts=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" colorscheme=\"light\"  style=\"background:#FFFFFF;padding-top:0px;\r\npadding-right:0px;\r\npadding-bottom:0px;\r\npadding-left:0px;\r\nmargin-top:0px;\r\nmargin-right:0px;\r\nmargin-bottom:0px;\r\nmargin-left:0px;\r\n\"><\/fb:comments>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said on Monday that her government will hold a general election by the end of this year, as scheduled. \u201cThe election will take place on time and the people will exercise their voting rights,\u201d Hasina said. The prime minister was speaking at a press conference on her return home from &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7474"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7475,"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7474\/revisions\/7475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}