Left leaning 11-party alliance yesterday announced a series of programmes including a foot march towards Dhaka, a national grand rally in the city and sit-in strikes at all district headquarters in February and March.
The programmes that also include protest processions throughout the country tomorrow were announced at a hartal-hour rally of the alliance held at Muktangan in the city yesterday afternoon. The rally was followed by a procession by central leaders of the alliance.
Co-ordinator of the 11-party alliance, Saifuddin Ahmed Manik, announced the programmes that he ^afty ^tar
aim at registering protest against the ruling party-sponsored attacks on its workers during yesterday's hartal and also building up an alternative left democratic political force in the country outside the AL-BNP polarisation.
In addition to sit-in strikes in all district headquarters on March1, and a national grand rally in the capital on March 31, the programmes include foot march towards Dhaka from around the country continuing from March 20 through March 31. The marchers will chant Cholo Cholo Dhaka Cholo (Let's march towards Dhaka).
To make the foot march and grand rally programmes a success, the 11-party leaders would also take on mass contact tours in two phases from February 14 through February 16 and again from March 23 through March 25.
Besides, the alliance leaders would hold rallies and exchange views with different professional groups on their plan for an alternative brand of politics and on different issues of national concerns as well.
The issues include, terrorism, corruption, plundering of national wealth, rise of fundamental forces and various problems facing public life.
In a written declaration from the 11-party rally, Manik said that Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya, a minister of the AL-government, led terrorists in attacking the peaceful processions of the alliance yesterday and also pelted its central leaders Khalequzzaman and Mujahidul Islam Selim with brickbats.
The 11-party declaration termed
Salman Rahman of the Beximco group as 'book defaulter' and resented the worst-case textbook scum that has made the entire educational system of the country teeter on the verge of collapse.
The declaration castigated the government's failure to uncover the mystery of bomb blast at a CPB grand rally that killed four people and injured 50 others at Paltan Maidan on January 20. Rather, both the ruling party and the main opposition party have indulged in charging each other for the incident just to gain political dividend, the declaration added.
The declaration bitterly criticised the plundering of national wealth and condemned illegal occupation of banks, residential houses, lakes and rivers by the ruling class.
The declaration referred to the recent halt of a parliamentary probe into the Magurchhara gas field disaster under the prime minister's instruction as a recent example of plundering of national wealth.
The 11-party declaration noted that people have virtually become hostages of the BNP-fundamentalist alliance and of the Awami League's misrule.
Besides coming down heavily on the rise of fundamentalist forces in the country, the declaration portrayed a sorry picture of public life where people's sufferings reached a new height with the essentials' prices plummeting and pollution, mosquito menace, lawlessness and drug peddling being on the rise.