Smarting under its worst electoral debacle, former prime minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party has decided to thoroughly reorganise the party after dissolving the current committees at all levels. "We will dissolve all the committees of the party and its fronts and reconstitute them through elections at grassroots level," Zia told a party meeting at the central Comilla district on Friday night.
The BNP chief, who rejected the results of the December 29 polls before accepting defeat grudgingly, attributed the loss on the "time constraints" for campaigns and "disorganised state of the party" ahead of the elections. "The support we received from the voters was tremendous in view of the fact that we had just two weeks (for campaigns) and a disorganised party ... Now we need to reorganise and unite and work with the people and by the grace of Allah we will be in power the next time," she said. Zia's archrival Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's Awami League led grand alliance won a stunning victory bagging three fourths of the 300 seat parliament but in terms of number of votes, the BNP led four party combine bagged one third of the total votes. It had won 2001 polls with two thirds majority. BNP sources said tenures of almost all party committees, excluding the national standing committee, already expired as the party did not hold elections to the committees in last two years during the state of emergency.