Awami League President Sheikh Hasina wants to bank on her party’s mid-ranking leaders to overcome the organisational weaknesses it has been facing by depriving them of ministerial jobs.
The decision came at a meeting of the AL Central Working Committee, the highest decision-making body of the party, on Saturday, said party sources.
To implement the plan, Hasina, also the prime minister, is not going to include her party’s three joint and six out of seven organising secretaries in the cabinet.
The joint general secretaries are Mahbub-Ul-Alam Hanif, Dipu Moni and Jahangir Kabir Nanak and the organising secretaries are Ahmad Hossain, Mezbah Uddin Siraj, BM Mozammel Hoq, AFM Bahauddin Nasim, Abu Sayed Al Mahmud Swapon and Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury. Of them, Dipu Moni and Nanak were in Hasina’s previous cabinet while Hanif was the PM’s special assistant.
Party insiders said the secretaries would be tasked to strengthen the AL grassroots ahead of the upazila parishad polls that begins on February 19.
And to make the grassroots stronger, AL will launch member-collection drives, organise visits and hold council sessions across the country. The central leaders are likely to commence the programmes this month.
This time, Hasina desires her party and government function separately and thus make the organisation stronger which suffered much since her party had formed government in 2009, say party insiders.
Saturday’s meeting sources said the party’s central committee member Abdur Rahman had congratulated the AL president for forming the government with senior and young lawmakers.
“The present cabinet comprises of elder and younger leaders of the party. But we, the mid-ranking leaders, have been ignored,” he was quoted as saying by another central committee member.
Responding to the disappointment of Rahman, who was an AL organising secretary, the AL chief said this time the party’s responsible leaders had been kept from the cabinet to make the party stronger.
She had told her colleagues that to this end she would not include the joint and organising secretaries to her cabinet, said sources.
However, the party’s secretary general, its five presidium members and one organising secretary have been made cabinet members.
AL General Secretary Syed Ashraful Islam got the LGRD ministry while the five presidium members have been given the post and telecommunications, agriculture, housing and public works, health, and the communications ministries.
Organising Secretary Bir Bahadur U Shei Ching has been made state minister for Chittagong Hill Tract affairs.
