The New Nation - Internet Edition

UNB, Dhaka

Peshajibi Samannay Parishad, a platform of professionals, yesterday rejected the Representation of People's Order Ordinance 2008, describing it as "unrealistic and undemocratic".

The Parishad leaders said it is the people who will choose their representatives to Parliament and a caretaker government cannot force them to make their choices.

"So, we're rejecting the RPO Ordinance'08. The government with such a law has planned to keep the country's meritorious persons away from politics," Parishad convenor Principal Kazi Faruk Ahmed said at a roundtable at the National Press Club.

Co-convenor of the Parishad and former President of Dhaka University Teachers' Association (DUTA) Prof. Dr AAMS Arefin Siddique, Observer Editor Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, Awami League's Agriculture Affairs Secretary and former MP Dr Abdur Razzak and Parishad's Member

Secretary Dr Kamrul Hasan Khan, among others, addressed the roundtable.

Prof. Arefin said in democracy people have the full freedom to make their own choices, but the caretaker government is enacting such laws that will only limit their choices to elect their representatives to Parliament.

"According to UNESCO-ILO convention, teachers can take leave for contesting elections and after the tenure as an MP and other public representative one can rejoin his or her previous institutions," he said.

"But being a signatory to the convention, the caretaker government has promulgated the ordinance with a provision for professionals that one will be eligible to contest an election only three years after his or her resignation or retirement," he said.

Prof. Arefin said the University Ordinance 1973, which was passed by the then parliament, allows a university teacher to resign and contest elections right away. "But the RPO'08 has snatched this opportunity too."

In Bangladesh, Dr Arefin said, it is often said politics is losing its merit. "If the reality is that then the RPO Ordinance'08 will create more intellectual vacuum in the country."

Dr Abdur Razzak said instead of working to arrange the stalled parliamentary polls in time, the government is trying to complicate the political situation in the name of enacting some "peculiar and impractical" laws.

"Our Army Chief at a programme at Sheraton Hotel had said that they would bring a new brand of democracy in the country. If so is the RPO' 08 a step towards bringing the new brand of democracy?" he asked.

The government was scheduled to register political parties in line with the RPO by June 30, but till today there was no sign of it, Dr Razzak said.

"In fact, they are killing time and making the situation complicated to foil the parliamentary polls," he alleged.

Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury said the RPO Ordinance'08 will be used as a weapon to establish autocracy in the country.