Daily Bangla Times: An interim government will remain in power during the upcoming national parliamentary elections, said Awami League general secretary Obaidul Quader.

The Awami League general secretary stated this in a statement sent to the news media on Wednesday.

About the next general election, he said the election will be held under the Election Commission where it is not an issue whether Awami League stays in power or not.

Even during elections, an interim government will run the country, he said, adding that the government will only perform its routine duties there.

He said according to the provisions of the constitution, the elections would be held on time and the people will exercise their voting rights to elect their representatives.

Quader said, "The interim government will only discharge their routine duties. Election will be held at appropriate time as per the constitutional provisions and people will elect representatives exercising their voting rights. There is no scope to do any exception to it for maintaining the continuity of the constitution keeping pace with the traditional democratic system around the world."

The second-most highest leader of the ruling party said the undemocratic political force centering the BNP is the main obstacle to the democracy and fair election in Bangladesh. "BNP, which was born in military cantonment in an undemocratic way, has always been involved in undemocratic activities. Whenever BNP came to power, the advanced democracy was stumbled."

On the other hand, Awami League has long been involved in the struggle to realise the right of voting of people. People's voting rights have been established by the Awami League.

The AL general secretary said BNP always did mockery with the people of this country in the name of democracy.

BNP's founder Ziaur Rahman gave a curfew-based democracy to the people of this country, he said, adding that the ghost of military dictatorship in the guise of democracy was imposed on the people of this country by him.

Following Zia's footsteps, the BNP gifted the nation with the elections of farce without the presence of voters and rigged by-elections to Magura and Mirpur, he said.

An Election Commission led by Aziz was formed and 1 crore 23 lakh fake voters were created in order to seize power by rigging the elections and that is not unknown to the people of the country, Quader said.

BNP has destroyed the democratic culture, democratic structures and institutions of this country, he said, adding that in continuation of that, whenever BNP came to power, it ran a steam roller of torture on the people of this country.

"All kinds of methods have been adopted (by BNP) to wipe out the opposition," he added.