MEETING WITH ARMY CHIEF: NCP faces unease
Staff Correspondent 23 March, 2025, 23:48
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A note of internal disquiet has apparently struck the National Citizen Party over a Facebook post by its chief organiser Hasnat Abdullah in which he accused the army of making attempts to rehabilitate Awami League.
The discord became visible when NCP chief organiser, Sarjis Alam, on Sunday in a detailed post on his Facebook wall publicly disagreed with some of Hasnat’s account of their meeting with the army chief.
Meanwhile, at an event in Sylhet, NCP chief coordinator Nasiruddin Patwari on Saturday criticised Hasnat’s statement, calling it devoid of etiquette.
Hasnat Abdullah on Friday in a Facebook post alleged that a conspiracy was being hatched to launch a ‘refined Awami League’ behind which India was playing the main role.
The post mentioned that former Jatiya Sangsad speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, former environment minister Saber Hossain Chowdhury and former Dhaka South city mayor Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh would be the face of Awami League in its repatriation.
He said that the proposal was given to him and two others from the cantonment on March 11.
When contacted, the Inter Services Public Relation Directorate declined to comment.
A report by Sweden-based Netra News, however, claimed that the army headquarters responded to Hasnat’s post.
The Netra News report, published on Saturday, quoted the army headquarters as saying that Hasnat Abdullah’s post was ‘nothing but a pure political stunt’.
In his post, Hasnat claimed that when they were presented with the proposal, they immediately opposed it, urging the authorities to abandon any plans to rehabilitate Awami League and instead focus on bringing the party to justice.
‘In response, we were told that if any obstacle was created to prevent Awami League’s return, we would have to take responsibility for the resulting crisis and that “Awami League must come back,”’ he said in the post.
In response to Hasnat, another NCP chief organiser, Sarjis, also turned to the social media and on Facebook wrote that he disagreed on several points with Hasnat’s account.
Sarjis said that he found inappropriate the manner in which Hasnat conveyed the discussion with the army chief on Facebook.
‘As a result, our important discussions with any stakeholders in the future could face a crisis of trust,’ he said.
‘That day, Hasnat and I went to speak with the army chief. I have some disagreement with the way Hasnat from his own perspective interpreted and then conveyed on his Facebook post what the army chief said,’ Sarjis wrote.
Sarjis continued to write that from his perspective, he viewed the army chief’s words not as a direct ‘proposal’ but rather as a ‘clear expression of opinion’.
He said that there was a difference between expressing an ‘opinion’ and making a ‘proposal’, though the army chief had spoken in a much more straightforward manner that day compared with previous conversations.
In his post, Sarjis also stated that regarding the issue of ‘pressure’ for a ‘refined Awami League,’ he did not perceive it as pressure.
Instead, he believed that the army chief was speaking with great confidence about the situation the country might face in the longer term and potential problems that might arise between political parties if a refined Awami League did not emerge.
Hasnat stated in his Facebook post, ‘At one point in the discussion, I said, “how can you forgive a party that has neither apologised nor admitted its crime?” The other party angrily replied, “You people know nothing. You lack wisdom and experience. We have been in this service for at least 40 years. We are older than you.”
‘It’s true that this conversation occurred. I didn’t think that the army chief said this in an angry tone, but rather in the tone and expression of someone relatively senior in age who was conveying the burden of experience to his juniors,’ Sarjis said in his post.
In the comment section underneath Sarjis’ post, NCP senior joint chief coordinator Abdul Hannan Masud commented, ‘I am saying this publicly—one of the two (Sarjis and Hasnat) is lying. This cannot continue.’
He said that despite holding important positions in the party, the way they were having meetings with people at different levels without informing the party and then and making it public without the party’s knowledge was triggering controversy around the NCP.
‘While people are dreaming about the NCP, whose agenda is it to make the NCP controversial?’ Masud questioned.
NCP chief coordinator Nasiruddin said that Hasnat’s statement regarding a meeting at the cantonment should not have been shared on social media.
‘We believe it lacks etiquette,’ he said.
Nasiruddin also said that they had observed various individuals from the cantonment interfering in the political space and emphasised that they did not want such interference.
He said that political decisions should be made by political figures and called on government institutions not to get involved in them.
Sweden-based Netra News, in its report, claimed that the army headquarters admitted that a meeting took place on March 11 with army chief General Waqar-uz-Zaman at the cantonment.
However, the allegations of ‘taking Hasnat Abdullah and proposing or pressuring him on the issue of the rehabilitation of Awami League’ were denied, the report said.
Netra News reported that when they contacted the army headquarters it responded through a spokesperson.
It said that the army headquarters’ statement described Hasnat Abdullah’s post as ‘nothing but a pure political stunt’.
According to Netra News, the army referred to the 27-year-old student leader’s statement as ‘an outright ridiculous and immature collection of stories’.
Asked about the Netra News report claiming army headquarters’ statement, the Inter Services Public Relation Directorate said that it did not give any official statement to Netra News.
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