The Workers Party's chief, lawmaker Rashed Khan Menon, on Saturday in the Jatiya Sangsad demanded that the government should make the production sharing contract with ConocoPhillips public.
Demanding open discussion in the Parliament on the deal with the US company, Menon said it is not acceptable that only some government officials and advisers should know the details of the deal while the people,
who are the owners of the nation's resources, are kept in the dark.
Reminding his fellow MPs that a minister of the BNP-Jamaat government was bribed by Canadian company Niko, he said,
'It is not unlikely that such corruption will be unearthed in the future
in connection with the ConocoPhillips deal.'
Denouncing the remarks made by a state minister who termed a leader of the oil-gas protection committee a 'foreign agent', Menon said that the people know very well who are the real foreign agents.
'Who are the foreign agents? The people who want to protect our gas or those who
are giving away our gas to a foreign company?' he questioned.
Criticising the contract with the US company, he said that the present prime minister once opposed any export of gas and had said that no gas would be exported without keeping an adequate reserve for the next 50 years, but now her own government has signed the deal which contains the provision for export of gas by a foreign company.
Menon criticised the Constitution Amendment Bill as it has retained some provisions that violate the spirit of the liberation war.
He also said that retention of the provisions inserted by the two martial law governments through the Fifth and Eighth Amendments would have dire consequences for the nation.
He also said that the caretaker government system should be scrapped one day as the court has declared it illegal but there should be political discussion on whether it can be retained for the next two terms to prevent any controversy over the fairness and credibility of the elections.
Criticising the court's permission for the issuance of fatwas, he said that it would create a Fatwa Board and introduce Shariah law in the future. 'There is also the possibility of a blasphemy law being enacted,' he said.
He also criticised the extensive news coverage of the prison sentence awarded to Khaleda Zia's son Arafat Rahman, and said that highlighting the corruption issue in the newspapers was an ill-motivated attempt to make it a national issue.
Source : New Age
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