The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

After long bargaining the leaders of the Jatiya Party (JP) yesterday managed to secure 50 seats from the Awami League (AL)-led grand alliance to contest the long-awaited parliamentary polls scheduled for December 29.

JP Acting Chairman Barrister Anisul Islam Mahmud formally disclosed this after half an hour long meeting with AL President Sheikh Hasina at her Sudha Sadan residence in Dhanmondi.

He said it had been settled that 50 candidates of JP would contest under the banner of the grand alliance.

Replying to a question on making JP chairman HM Ershad the country's president, Mahmud said the ultimate target of the grand alliance was to earn victory in the parliamentary elections. "We will mull over the issue, after we voted to power," he added.

For the last two days, rumours and apprehensions had run high across the country that the Jatiya Party would quit the grand alliance, as the AL had not agreed to make Ershad president and to offer JP its desired 60 seats.

The two parties reached consensus over the issue of seat sharing on Sunday night after staging a range of dramas during the whole day.

On Sunday evening a rumour was rife throughout the country following the briefing of Ershad that JP would quit the grand alliance, if JP was not given 60 seats and would not make Ershad the president.

Later thatevening, JP and AL in a joint briefing declared that the grand alliance would continue to work as usual to contest the polls and if they won, form the government jointly.

Sources said the two former ruling parties reached consensus that the matter of president post for Ershad would be finalised should the grand alliance win the polls, billed one of most crucial ones in Bangladesh's history in view of the political nemesis of all the former rulers in the interim period since the 1/11 changeover.

Mahmud, along with his party-colleague Ziauddin Bablu, talked to the AL president for 25 minutes in the last-ditch seat-sharing negotiations a day after JP aspirants separately filed nominations for maximum of the Jatiya Sangsad seats on the last day Sunday.