The National Citizens’ Committee, a recently launched platform of citizens who were directly involved in the July student-people movement that ensured the fall of the Sheikh Hasina regime on August 5, is moving towards floating a political party.
As part of this, the Student Movement Against Discrimination, a platform of students who led the student-people mass uprising, held a series of meetings in different districts, while the Citizens’ Committee is working to form search committees in all the districts of the country to form a full-fledged committee for each of the districts.
Several leaders of the platform said that they were yet to finalise the name of their political party.
The Citizens’ Committee started their work to form committees in the metropolitan areas and the districts in the past month and it was now ready to announce some committees soon, they said.
‘Hopefully, we will announce the Dhaka city unit committee of the National Citizens’ Committee immediately after the Durga Puja vacation,’ the platform’s spokesperson Samantha Sharmin said.
She said that they would gradually declare the committees of other units.
She also said that they, as per their previous plan, had already held some meetings with different political parties and alliances including Ganatantra Mancha, Left Democratic Alliance, AB Party and Ganosamhati Andolon.
She said that they would hold meetings with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party secretary general, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, and the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami after the puja vacation.
Neither the National Citizens’ Committee nor the Student Movement Against Discrimination, however, was introducing themselves as a political party right now, several organisers said.
They said that now their main target was to form a political party on the basis of the spirit of July-August student-mass uprising.
‘As yet our organisation is not a political party, but each of our steps and thoughts is political. Now our organisation is a political platform, not a party,’ Samantha said.
She said that they were not willing to form a political party like the existing traditional ones.
‘Everything, what and how we will do, will be clear to the people gradually,’ she said.
On September 8, the National Citizens’ Committee held its debut rally at the Central Shaheed Minar in Dhaka as a platform to nurture the hopes and aspirations of the sections of the society that participated in the Students Movement Against Discrimination to oust the previous Awami League government on August 5.
The organisers said that the committee’s 55-member body was formed to work towards realising a political settlement among various stakeholders and would remain committed to eradicating fascism in all its forms.
Muhammad Nasiruddin Patwari, a former AB Party leader, was made convener of the platform while Akhtar Hossain, the former convener of the Ganatantrik Chhatra Shakti, was made its member secretary.