<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b><font color="#634aa5">BNP senior leader Nazrul Islam Khan on Wednesday alleged&nbsp; that the disparity between the rich and the poor is widening gradually due to the lack of democracy in the country.</font></b></span><br></div><div><br></div><div>“If you think about the development of everyone, there is no way except democracy. As there is no democracy, a large number of people in the country are now crushed by the rise in commodity prices while a handful of people are buying houses worth crores of taka,” he said.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>Speaking at a doa and milad mahfil, the BNP leader also alleged that only 5 percent of the people are embezzling a huge amount of the country's wealth and money by indulging in corruption and looting.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>Nazrul, a BNP standing committee member, said the five percent people are given the scope to amass the ill-gotten money as the government does not need the support of the majority of the people. “As a result, they do not believe in voting.”</div><div><br></div><div>“If the votes were required (to form the government), they would have conducted free and fair elections, not a one-sided election like January-7 one,” he observed.</div><div><br></div><div>Stating that there is no alternative to restoring the people’s right to vote to get rid of such a situation in the country, the BNP leader urged everyone to get united to make the opposition parties’ ongoing&nbsp; anti-government movement a success.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>He said the country’s people established democracy by sacrificing their lives and blood by liberating the country through the Liberation War in 1971. “That democracy does not exist now in Bangladesh…it has been destroyed.”</div><div><br></div><div>BNP arranged the programme programme at its Nayapaltan central office, marking the ninth death anniversary of Arafat Rahman Koko, the younger son of BNP founder Ziaur Rahman and party chairperson Khaleda Zia.</div><div><br></div><div>A munajat was offered at the end of the programme, seeking eternal peace for Koko’s departed soul.</div><div><br></div><div>Earlier in the morning, BNP leaders and activists, led by its standing committee member Dr Abdul Moyeen Khan, placed wreaths at Koko’s grave and offer fateha there, reports UNB</div><div><br></div><div>On January 24, 2015, Koko died of cardiac arrest aged 45 in Malaysia.</div><div><br></div><div>His body was brought back home on January 27 and buried at Banani Graveyard.</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div>