Melbourne-based academic criticises Zia for holding “farcical vote of confidence in 1977”

Acclaimed academic, Professor Shams Rahman, has lashed out at Ziaur Rahman, the founder of BNP, for "staging a farcical national vote of confidence in 1977" only to solidify his hold on to state power after running the country for 18 months under strict martial law.

Raising questions about the legitimacy centring the birth of Bangladesh's Nationalist Party (BNP), Prof Shams, who teaches at the College of Business and Law at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, divulged that the party was founded with Zia at the helm in barracks.

"That BNP still remains in a denial mode and continues to glorify the mastermind of those darkest episodes as its founder, even when the nation is celebrating fifty years of independence – clearly putting a big question mark over the party's commitment to the constitution," he added while addressing a virtual discussion on Monday night.

In reference to the "notorious national referendum" that Zia oversaw back in 1977, Prof Shams said "that shameful step served a big blow to the spirit of the country's Liberation War, tore down the country's constitution and offered an olive branch for anti-liberation forces – radical elements." 

Within years into country's liberation, the Father of the Nation was assassinated with most of his family members, but in the aftermath, Zia rose to the rank of president and rehabilitated the killers of Bangabandhu – trampling the secular credentials of the constitution earned at the cost of an ocean of blood, revealed the Melbourne-based professor at the webinar.

"It is sheer irony that BNP still calls the referendum a great exercise of democratic franchise, but in reality no one was permitted to campaign on the negative side and many opposition leaders were still in jail, leaving little doubt on the outcome," said Ajoy Dasgupta, a veteran journalist and researcher, addressing the webinar.

Dasgupta, an Ekushey Padak awardee, said the military rulers who had taken over and ruled Bangladesh for the next 15 years legitimised the pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami, and introduced constitutional amendments that undermined the country's secular democratic polity.