Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami’s Central Publicity Department’s Secretary Professor Md. Tasnim Alam has issued the following statement on 6th July, 2018 protesting and gainsaying the reports of Daily Prothom Alo, Daily Kaler Kantha and several other news papers and news portals which have been published in regards to the Jamaat’s decision of having mayoral candidate in the upcoming Sylhet City Corporation Election.
“I am vehemently protesting the reports of Daily Prothom Alo, Daily Kaler Kantha and several other news papers and news portals which published some false information regarding Jamaat’s decision of having mayoral candidate in the upcoming Sylhet City Corporation Election. This false and intentional information have been published just to create confusion among the general masses.
Daily Prothom Alo in its report claimed that, Jamaat’s Secretary General Dr. Shafiqur Rahman has some personal interest behind party’s decision of participating in the Sylhet city mayoral election. It also claimed that, behind the curtain, there are secret relationships with a local Awami League leader. All this information is untrue. Jamaat has declared its mayoral candidate for Sylhet City Corporation as per the party decision. No question can be emanated of having any secret relationship or negotiation between Awami League and Jamaat-e-Islami or having any personal interest of Jamaat’s Secretary General in this regard. Jamaat has violated the decision of 20 party alliances; such claims of some news papers are also false. 20 party alliances so far did not reach into a consensus about the mayoral candidate of Sylhet City Corporation. So there is no chance of violating the alliance’s decision.
Jamaat is not interested to form a greater unity with the liberal parties, such claim of Daily Kaler Kantha is also baseless. Jamaat is truly interested to form a greater national unity with all the existing parties in opposition in order to restore rule of law and genuine electoral system. Kaler Kantha’s information about Jamaat’s bagged vote in 2008 and the previous election is also not true. No genuine election has been taken place since 2008 so it is not possible to count any party’s vote now.
It should not be expected from any quarter that 20 party alliance would face any trouble centring the Sylhet City Corporation Election. For the sake of national unity, we had supported the BNP backed candidates in all the previous election. We are expecting that 20 party alliance would declare Jamaat’s candidate as the candidate of the alliances in the upcoming election. Our expectation in this regard is clearly justified and logical. In such backdrop, we hope and believe that the alliance partners of the 20 party alliances would declare our candidate as their candidate to resolve the existing crisis.
We further hope that Daily Prothom Alo, Kaler Kantha and all the concerned news papers and news portals would be refrained from publishing false and confusing reports and publish this rejoinder properly to lessen the mass confusion.”
