DHAKA, Nov 22: The Awami League-led opposition alliance on Tuesday said it would not take part in the next polls, due early next year, if the opposition’s demands for changes in the composition and powers of the non-party caretaker government were not met.

Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina unveiled a two-month agitation programme.

Sheikh Hasina announced the programme while speaking at a rally at Paltan Maidan.

The programme includes the staging of demonstrations on Wednesday and a dawn-to-dusk strike on Thursday.

The opposition alliance also decided to organize a long march to Dhaka on Jan 22.

The alliance said it would try to get religion-based politics banned if it returned to power.

The chiefs of smaller parties in the Awami League-led combine said they had formed an ‘alliance of pro-liberation forces’ to oust a ‘corrupt, communal, militant and incompetent government’, vowing to continue their movement until the formation of a ‘national government’.

They accused the government of crippling every sector of the country and asked it to accept the opposition proposal for reforms in the election commission and changes in the constitutional provision for caretaker government.

“The alliance has been formed to win back people’s rights and will continue its movement until the formation of national government upon the ouster of the BNP-led alliance government,” the president of a faction of Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal, Hasanul Haq Inu, told the rally.

He urged leaders of the alliance to go to the people and apologize for whatever mistakes they had committed in the past.

The president of the Workers Party, Rashed Khan Menon, termed the prime minister a ‘hypocrite’ and said the ‘BNP-Jamaat’ government wanted to tarnish religion

Mr Menon termed the rally a success and said it proved the failure of the government which he had tried ‘different ways to foil the opposition programme’.

The Gana Forum president, Dr Kamal Hossain, alleged that the government had failed in every sector and violated the constitution. “The government has developed a habit of violating the constitution that prompted it to engineer presidential clemency to a murder convict without any legal ground.”

“Ironically”, he said, “the government that claims to be pro-Islamist, even failed to ensure flights for Haj pilgrims because of pervasive corruption.”

Terrorism, corruption, militancy and politicization have spread like a pandemic and the people will rid the country of the ‘unpatriotic government’ through agitation, Mr Kamal said.