The people want peace and security and we are pledge-bound to ensure it: HPM Sheikh Hasina

"The people want peace and security and we are pledge-bound to ensure it . . . we will take whatever step is needed for that," she told the maiden joint meeting of Awami League's Advisory Council and Central Working Committee (ALCWC) here since the party's 20th council last month.

Sheikh Hasina, also the Awai League president, called upon the countrymen to stay alert against brewing plots being hatched by the anti-liberation forces and their cohorts, "who previously grabbed power illegally" referring to Jamaat and BNP.

"When the countrymen remain in comfort and peace, Bangladesh image is being brightened and investment started pouring, these elements began conspiracies to halt the country's progress and development," she said.

Sheikh Hasina urged the countrymen to put up a united resistance against terrorism and militancy and asked party leaders and workers as well as other pro-liberation forces to mobilize the campaign.

She said good awareness has been created among the people against terrorism and militancy as nobody wants to see the twin monsters.

"The administration and the law enforcement agencies were quite active and (so) if the government and the people could put up resistance together, we would be able to stamp out terrorism and militancy from the country's soil Insha Allah," she said.

Sheikh Hasina also reiterated her government's determination to establish Bangladesh as a hunger and poverty-free Sonar Bangla as dreamt by Bangabandhu by ensuring peace and security for the people.

"We have firm belief that we would be able to achieve the goal by maintaining the economic advancement that the government launched," she said.

Highlighting various successes of her government, Sheikh Hasina expressed her hope that like the previous two general elections, the people would re-elect Awami League in the next general election to be held by 2019.

The premier said Bangladesh is moving ahead and will continue to move and the support and cooperation of the people is very much indispensable to continue the development process.

"I hope that like the previous polls of 2008 and 2014, the countrymen would again vote for AL and reelect it and thus would keep the flow of development ongoing," she said.

She said during the past BNP-Jamaat regime the country witnessed unbridled corruption alongside inhuman torture and repression on innocent people including women as well as leaders and workers of Awami Legue.

"They had established a reign of terror during their five-year misrule," she said.

Again, the premier said, the BNP-Jamaat unleashed terrorism and vandalism and burnt the people to death before and after the last general election and in the first three months of 2015 to foil the national elections and topple the government as "their aim was to push the country towards darkness".

Sheikh Hasina said the politics of killing, coup and conspiracies was actually initiated by military dictator Ziaur Rahman after brutal assassination of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975 while he destroyed the 1971 Liberation War spirit by rehabilitating war criminals, killers and rapists.

"It is Awami League that implemented various development programmes following a pragmatic economic policy and the countrymen witnessed their desired development as the most traditional party for three times while it ran the country for two consecutively terms since 1996," she said.

The premier said her government was working relentlessly to implement five-year plan and 10-year-long perspective plan as well as other programmes to build Bangladesh as a middle income country by 2021.

Sheikh Hasina expressed her strong optimism that it would be possible to celebrate the birth centenary of Bangabandhu in 2020 as a middle income country and establish Bangladesh as a developed and rich one by the year 2041.

At the outset of the meeting, a munajat was offered seeking continued peace, progress of the nation and eternal peace of the departed souls of Bangabandhu and other martyrs of the August 15 massacre.