Bangladesh's main opposition alliance Friday called another round of nationwide strike from Sunday morning demanding national elections under a non-party caretaker government.
After a meeting of ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led 18-party opposition alliance, acting secretary general of the party Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir made the announcement of 72-hour strike from Nov 10 to 13 in a press briefing, Xinhua reported.
Alamgir said the opposition alliance has decided to enforce the shutdown peacefully, the announcement of which came just two days after the opposition alliance observed a 60-hour countrywide strike Nov 4 morning amid violent clashes, vandalism, arson and crude bomb attacks.
Earlier, Khaleda's party and its 17 allies, including the key Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party, observed a 60-hour countrywide strike from Oct 27.
Dozens of people, including ruling and the opposition party men, died and hundreds of others were injured in stray incidents of strike violence since Oct 27 in Dhaka and elsewhere in the country.
The two leading leaders of Bangladesh's politics held phone talks Oct 26, the first direct conversation between them since January 2009, when Hasina's cabinet took charge of office.
Khaleda has asked Hasina's party to bring the caretaker system, or else it won't participate in the next polls, because it fears an election without it will not be free and fair.
Despite the opposition alliance's threat to boycott elections, Bangladesh's ruling coalition has initiated moves to form an all-party polls-time interim cabinet in line with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's proposal.
In the cabinet meeting, ministers reportedly decided that they would resign in the next seven days to pave way for the formation of the all-party polls-time government headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The BNP has already rejected Hasina's all-party interim government proposal.
The parliament will expire Jan 24 next year and elections reportedly should be held within 90 days before its expiry.
Since June 2011, when the Bangladesh parliament abolished the non-party caretaker government system after an apex court verdict declared the 15-year-old constitutional provision illegal, the BNP-led alliance has been waging mass protests demanding the reinstatement of the provision.
