“Bangladesh has progressed a lot in the last 10 years (under AL leadership). We've to go far. So, our organisation will have to be strengthened and we’ll have to gain public trust and confidence,” she said.

Sheikh Hasina, also the Prime Minister, said this while delivering the opening speech at the second-day session of the two-day national council of the Awami League at the Institute of Engineers, Bangladesh in the city.

The council session started at 10:25am with the AL president in the chair. Some 7,500 councillors of 79 organisational districts joined the session to elect the new AL leadership for the next three-year term.

Sheikh Hasina said when a political party comes to power, it usually cannot uphold popularity. “But we could it. We attained public trust and confidence,” she added.

In this context, she asked the councillors to work for gaining public trust and confidence so that the people would elect AL to power by casting votes spontaneously and the party can serve the people.

Noting that AL brought the independence of the country under the leadership of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Prime Minister said AL stood beside the people of the country during any crisis and changed the fate of the people.

The politics of killing, coup and conspiracy had been established in the country after the killing of the Father of the Nation on August 15, 1975.

Awami League led struggle and waged movements against other governments that played games with the fate of the country’s men in 29 years (from 1975 to 1996 and from 2001 to 2009) with a view to establishing the rights of the people, she said.

Sheikh Hasina, also the eldest daughter of the Father of the Nation, said she had returned home after being elected the AL president in 1981 with a goal to make Bangladesh a hunger- and poverty-free developed country as dreamt by Bangabandhu.

She said her father dedicated his entire life to change the fate of the people of Bangali nation by making them free from hunger and poverty as well as to establish the nation at a dignified position in the world arena.

“Only when AL came to power, the government served the people, worked for the wellbeing of the people and changed the fate of the people,” said the Prime Minister.

She urged the councillors to follow the ideology of the Father of the Nation.

To know the Father of the Nation, Hasina suggested to read ‘Osamapta Attajiboni' (Unfinished Memoir of Bangabandhu) and ‘Karagarer Rojnamcha’ (Jail Dairy of Bangabandhu) and the book on Intelligence Reports over Bangabandhu, which is now being published.

AL General Secretary Obaidul Qauder and six councillors from six divisions spoke on the occasion.

A three-member election commission headed by AL advisory council member Advocate Yusuf Hossain Humayun as the Chairman will elect the new leadership of the ruling party.