DHAKA: Sajeeb Wazed Joy, son of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, on Wednesday said the actual reason of boycotting the election by the BNP is that they fell behind in the polls and can no longer win an election.

The adviser to the premier made the observation through his facebook post at 12:30 am Wednesday.

Joy said, “I had predicted it two years ago that the BNP will not participate in an election unless they are sure to win.”

The post reads as below:

The real reason BNP has boycotted the election is that they fell behind in the polls and can no longer win an election. We conducted polls with Democracy International in October and two sets of adjusted results of those polls have been published. In the unadjusted data we lead 48.3% to 30.3%. After adjusting for demographics, which is standard polling practice, the result becomes AL 39.6% BNP 34.2%.

Until August both parties were neck and neck in the polls. The BNP had caught us due to their propaganda machinery and a lack of PR from our side. They were playing on an empty field and scoring. Once we started our campaign we began to counter their false propaganda and highlight our Government’s tremendous achievements. Then we started to pull ahead by October.

I now have another set of poll results conducted last month. This is a smaller sample, only 1000 people, but the final results are AL 35.5% BNP 28.8%. Their popularity has dropped dramatically because of their terrorism in the past couple of months.

I had predicted it two years ago that the BNP will not participate in an election unless they are sure to win. They decided to boycott in late October once the polls went against them. At that point they stopped all their campaigning and election preparation. All the rest has just been an eyewash. They have no intention of coming to the polls.

For those who say my mother should resign, why? She has done nothing wrong. She has not attempted to manipulate even one election out of almost 6000 conducted in our term. She has not attempted to manipulate the voters list as Khaleda Zia did in her term with 14 million false voters. She has made a huge compromise in inviting all parties to form an interim Government. She even invited Khaleda Zia personally to talk and offered all ministries, including the Home Ministry. So why should my mother resign?

You can create a completely level playing field, but if the other team refuses to play because they know they will lose, there is nothing you can do. We cannot force the BNP to participate in elections any more than we could force Khaleda Zia to come to Gonobhobon for dinner.

More importantly, Khaleda Zia and the BNP have unleashed terror across the country. There have been absolutely no protestors out on the street anywhere, but BNP-Jamaat terrorists have been setting people on fire in taxis and buses, derailing trains full of passengers, throwing bombs on Awami League leaders’ houses and cars. They have even attacked Election Commission offices and killed an official. What would this be called if it were to happen in the US, UK or any other country? It would be called terrorism.

BDST: 0924 HRS, DEC 04 , 2013