Rebranding of BNP’s Tarique Rahman cannot erase corrupt legacy: Bangladesh Awami League

Dhaka: Bangladesh Awami League on Thursday warned that the country is witnessing a disturbing political trend, with Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Chairman Tarique Rahman being celebrated, rehabilitated, and projected as a future leader, raising concerns that the nation’s history has been erased and its collective memory failed.

“The crimes, corruption, and state capture of the 2001–2006 period are being deliberately forgotten, softened, or conveniently ignored. This amnesia is dangerous. Because what Tarique Rahman did during that time was not a footnote in history, it was one of the darkest chapters of institutional collapse in Bangladesh,” the Awami League stated.

According to the Awami League, the Hawa Bhaban, the political office of former BNP Chief Khaleda Zia, was an ordinary house turned into an extraordinary centre of unlawful power during the BNP tenure from 2001 to 2006 in Bangladesh.

“Hawa Bhaban did not merely influence governance; it overrode the Prime Minister’s Office itself. Policies, projects, postings, promotions, tenders, and business approvals were decided there. The elected government became secondary. The Constitution became irrelevant. The real state operated from behind closed doors, under the command of one unelected individual,” it stated.

The party stressed that what operated from Hawa Bhaban was not random corruption but a system — a “fixed, ruthless formula”. During the 2001–2006 BNP tenure, it said, a mandatory 10 per cent commission became the unofficial tax on every government development project.

“This was not a rumour or exception; it was widely documented, openly discussed, and fearfully enforced. No commission, no work,” the Awami League stressed.

At the centre of this alleged system, the Awami League said, was Tarique, whose sustained pattern of extortion earned him a nationwide identity — “Mr Ten Per cent”.

“A man who institutionalised bribery, monetised development, and turned governance into a commission-based enterprise is being rebranded as a leader. But history is stubborn. And the 10 per cent empire remains one of the clearest proofs that Tarique Rahman did not serve the state; he sold it,” the party mentioned.

According to the Awami League, Tarique’s identity is inseparable from multiple corruption and criminal cases rooted in the 2001–2006 period — cases that emerged from a system of “parallel governance, commission-based decision-making, and protected criminal networks”.

Asserting that these were not isolated accusations, the party said, the cases formed a pattern that defined an era.

“A nationally known corrupt figure cannot represent national morality. No rebranding can erase the legacy of Hawa Bhaban. Bangladesh needs leadership built on integrity, not the return of a culture that turned the state into a business,” the Awami League noted.

IANS