Consensus dialogue: 12-Party Alliance against reforms delay

Mustafa Jamal Haider, the chief coordinator of the 12-Party Alliance, says spending an extensive amount of time on reforms is not desirable.

Jamal urged authorities to bring political parties to points of agreement “as soon as possible” and leave proposals on which opinions are divided for later.

Jamal, the chairman of the Jatiya Party, led 11 other leaders of the alliance in the dialogue with the National Consensus Commission at the LD Hall of the parliament complex on Sunday.

He said ambivalence among political parties was natural, and added: “This is the beauty and excellence of democracy. But within that, we can reach a minimum consensus so that autocracy never arises again in future.”

“At least, the rules of this state structure should be such that no new powerful person, no new chief justice can take advantage of it and impose autocratic rule by radically changing the Constitution. That is basically our objective.”

He said, “Today, our democratic aspiration is to hand over state power to the elected representatives of the people, the aspiration to build the country. Let that not be delayed.”

The meeting, moderated by the Chief Advisor’s Special Assistant Monir Haider, was attended by commission members Safar Raj Hossain, Muhammad Ayub Mia, Badiul Alam Majumdar, and Iftekharuzzaman.

Ali Riaz, vice-chairman of the commission, has called on political parties to discuss with their allies to reach a national consensus.

At the start of the discussion, he said, “The responsibility of establishing a national consensus is not only of the National Consensus Commission. Those of you who are part of the struggle, those who are talking to us today, talk to your allies, talk to other political forces -- how can we come to a [point of agreement]?

“We all have to come to one place. We may not be able to agree on everything, but we have to agree on the fundamentals of state formation and take Bangladesh forward.”

Ali Riaz announced plans to start the second phase of discussions with political parties and alliances midway into this month.

He said, “A National Charter will be prepared on the basis of all the issues on which the political parties will reach a consensus. We want to advance the reform process of the political parties.”

Explaining the goal of the commission, Ali Riaz said: “We want to prepare a National Charter through discussions with everyone -- which will determine a path to the future of Bangladesh.”

The Consensus Commission sent the recommendations of the five commissions on state reforms in the form of a spreadsheet to 39 parties and sought their opinions. Of them, 35 parties submitted their opinions. After that, the commission is holding separate dialogues with them.