ASK’s concern over the recent incidents

We are very much concerned over the recent incidents of exerting pressure, attack and vandalism by the ruling party supporters centering the recruitment of party followers at Pabna and other places of the country.

We have noticed that the supporters of the ruling party who has come to power with the promise of change are acting desperately to influence tender submission, government recruitments, and student admission from the very beginning. Recently even an Advisor to the Prime Minister has exerted pressure to recruit party men. After every such incident the party high command expressed their vow not to spare anybody involved. In some cases some steps have also been taken. But at the same time some ruling party influentials lent support to the kingpins of such incidents. Probably, this is the reason why incidents could not be stopped yet. Moreover, some Ministers and parliament members resented on the news media for bringing these incidents to public.

We want to say that these examples are neither consistent with democratic practices nor the promises of the Government. To institutionalise democracy and to make it sustainable, freedom of expression needs to be ensured and everybody should be judged according to their own merit, not by their political identity.

We want to add that, any damage to the democratic environment will be unfortunate for all of us. That is why it is necessary to be careful in seeing that democracy sustains and as citizens respectful to democracy we cannot keep quiet at such incidents.