Home minister Salahuddin Ahmed on Thursday urged opposition lawmakers to come forward in support of the July National Charter, saying its benefits could not be secured without supporting the required constitutional changes.

‘You cannot demand the full benefits of the charter while not cooperating on the changes needed to implement it. The two positions are incompatible,’ he said during a parliamentary session.

The minister said the constitution would be amended and the charter implemented accordingly, with parliamentary standing committee chairmanships distributed to the opposition in line with the charter’s provisions. 

He urged opposition lawmakers to take part in the constitutional amendment committee and to raise their concerns there rather than elsewhere.

‘We can make this pledge here, on the floor of this House,’ the home minister said, adding that the government intended to bring forward the constitutional amendment bill as soon as possible so that it could take effect quickly and pave the way for the establishment of an upper house of parliament.

The home minister’s remarks came in response to opposition leader in parliament Shafiqur Rahman, who told the House that while the prime minister had promised to implement the charter to the word and letter, there were different ways to do so. 

‘The implementation of the July charter can take various forms. We will not react with anger; instead, we will seek to understand its true essence,’ Shafiqur said.

Shafiqur also referred back to comments the home minister had made in Wednesday’s sitting, in which the minister said there was no precedent in Bangladesh’s parliamentary history of an opposition party being given the chairmanship of a standing committee.

The opposition leader acknowledged this was broadly accurate, but noted one exception: the ninth Jatiya Sangsad, when the Jamaat-e-Islami held only two seats and BNP 24, out of 26 opposition members in total and even then, two standing committee chairmanships went to opposition members.

Responding, Salahuddin said the government had already followed the precedent set during the tenure of the late president Ziaur Rahman, under which the opposition traditionally chaired the Public Accounts Committee.

In keeping with that tradition, he said, the chairmanship of that committee had already been handed to deputy opposition leader in parliament Abdullah Mohammad Taher.

On the wider question of the charter, the home minister said that regardless of the differing terminology used by each side – with the opposition preferring to call it ‘reform’ and the government ‘amendment’ – the substance was the same, and that the matter would ultimately have to be settled through debate within the parliament.