An alliance of several leftist parties on Monday expressed anger over the government's refusal to withdraw its decision to lease the New Mooring Container Terminal in Chattogram to a foreign company.
They stressed that no government, elected or unelected, has the right to take a decision on a sensitive issue like port management without consulting the public.
If the government does not withdraw from this controversial decision, the movement to protect the country's resources and sovereignty will continue, the leaders said.
The call was made at a Central Steering Committee meeting of the alliance, held at the Communist Party of Bangladesh's central office in the capital's Paltan.
The issue came to the fore again after Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) Executive Chairman Chowdhury Ashik Mahmud Bin Harun said on Sunday that the government was aiming to appoint a foreign operator to at least one of three key terminals by December.
The party leaders reminded that such decisions are detrimental to sovereignty and should therefore be rejected.
Make public all agreements with other countries
The alliance also demanded all agreements made with other nations, including the United States and India, be made public and that all agreements against national interests be canceled.
This may have been in response to Bangladesh's secretive tariff negotiations with the US, the details of which "do not need to be made public", according to a statement by Finance Adviser Salehuddin Ahmed in early August.
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