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POLITICS-BANGLADESH: Army Ready to Break Anti-Poll Blockade
By Farid Ahmed
DHAKA, Jan 7 (IPS) - Political parties pushing for cancellation of national elections, set for Jan. 22, began on Sunday a three-day transport blockade that the caretaker government led by President Iajuddin Ahmed has warned would be tackled by the army - already deployed in strength on the streets of the capital.
More than 12,000 army and police troops, backed by a ban on demonstrations, are geared up to break the blockade of Dhaka called by a coalition of 19 political parties. Poll-related protests and blockades since October have resulted in the deaths of at least 35 people.
Ahmed enjoys the support of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Begum Khaleda Zia, who stepped down as prime minister in October after completing a five-year-term in office. Backing the move to push the polls through is the Jamaat-e-Islami, BNP's fundamentalist ally.
Ranged against them is the coalition led by the Awami League, headed by former prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, that is determined to allow the elections to held only under a ‘neutral' caretaker government and after the installation of a new Election Commission that is ready to revise ‘rigged' electoral rolls.
The Awami League and its allies have already announced a boycott of the polls and withdrawn their candidates.
"If necessary, we'll continue the blockade for 10 days," Sheikh Hasina threatened Friday night. "If Iajuddin Ahmed doesn't quit, we'll lay siege to the Bangabhaban (presidential palace) for an indefinite period." She has accused Ahmed of helping the BNP and the Jamaat-e-Islami of rigging the elections and grossly manipulating voter rolls.
Laying out plans to get the ‘'one-sided polls'' cancelled, Awami League general secretary Abdul Jalil said the siege of the presidential palace would begin on Tuesday and followed by a mass rally in Dhaka on Wednesday.
Reacting, the President issued a statement late Saturday saying that he did not have the power to postpone the polls as this would call for a constitutional amendment.
This is the first election since the inception, in 1996, of the interim caretaker government system for holding polls that the neutrality of the two 'referees' - the head of an interim caretaker government and the Election Commission - has been seriously questioned.
"The next few weeks are very crucial for Bangladesh as the country is set to see widespread violence after weeks of political bickering over the polls and finally the government's decision to hold the polls without ensuring the participation of all key stakeholders," said Shafiqul Islam, a college teacher in Dhaka.
"Unless the election is credible to all, political unrest will continue, economic growth will be held back," Muzaffer Ahmed, a retired professor of economics of Dhaka University, told IPS.
"The political culture has to be pro-people and the politicians must have an attitude of rendering service to the people instead of only fighting for power," said the elderly professor who now heads the Bangladesh chapter of the Berlin- based global corruption watchdog Transparency International.
Following the call for a poll boycott, 2,370 candidates, mostly of the Awami League and its allies, have withdrawn their candidatures leaving the field wide open to the BNP-led alliance and independent candidates in the race for the 300 seats in the national parliament.
Besides the Awami League-led alliance, the Communist Party of Bangladesh and several other small parties also decided not to join the polls questioning its credibility.
With the withdrawal of nominations by the majority of the parties, Khaleda and her eldest son Tarique Rahman, along with 15 other candidates have already ‘won' the polls unopposed.
Khaleda has said that her four-party alliance would go to the polls as there was a constitutional obligation to hold elections within 90 days of transferring power to a caretaker administration. ‘'If the acceptability of the election fails due to a boycott by any party, that party would be responsible, not those joining the polls," she said at a press conference in Dhaka on Friday.
"Bangladesh is going to see another one-sided election since 1991 when the country restored parliamentary system of democracy after the fall of the military dictatorship of Hussain Muhammad Ershad," said Shrifuddin Bhuiyan, a businessman in Dhaka.
The BNP won another ‘one-sided election' in February 1996 but the government it formed lasted only a few weeks and was forced to step down amid violent street demonstrations. Since its secession from Pakistan in 1971, Bangladesh has had a history of bloody coups and rigged elections.
Two former presidents of the country - Ershad who now leads the Jatiya Party and AQM Badruddoza Chowdhury of the Liberal Democratic Party - have said that they would join street demonstrations to resist the polls.
Indeed, the Awami League-led coalition announced that it would join the polls two weeks ago, but changed its stand after the Election Commission cancelled the candidacy of Ershad, who was handed down a two-year jail sentence on Dec. 14 by the Bangladesh High Court in a decade-old case relating to irregularities in the purchase of Japanese boats.
Curiously enough, the judgement was delivered soon after Ershad announced that he would join the election alliance led by the Awami League. Ershad was acquitted in four earlier cases, but these were decided while he was considering political alignment with the BNP.
Bangladesh's major development partners, the United States, Britain and the European Union, have expressed disappointment over the decision to boycott the polls and asked the government to ensure an atmosphere where all parties could take part.
‘'We are concerned at the probable violence and hope a way can be found out so that all political parties can participate in the elections,'' said British High Commissioner to Bangladesh Anwar Choudhury.
In December, the Asian Development Bank had warned that the persisting political unrest would slow down the momentum of Bangladesh's growth, hamper industrial production and service sector expansion.
In a quarterly report on Bangladesh's economy, the multilateral lending agency forecast multiplied negative impacts of the political uncertainty on various productive sectors, adversely affecting the economy in the run-up to the general elections.
A leading Bangladeshi economist Zaid Bakht told IPS that the situation had reached a point of no return. ‘'The country will have to pay a huge toll as the unrest will dampen the economic activities," Bakht, a director at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, said.
Like economists and businessmen, the NGO workers have also been calling for a solution to the impasse.
"Political stability is interlinked with any development activities and if there is any unrest we'll have to suffer a lot with our ongoing projects across Bangladesh," said Syed Ishteaque Ali Jinnah, Director for Policy and Advocacy, of Water Aid Bangladesh, an associate of Britain NGO - WaterAid.
"We're working with 21 local partners to improve the lives of the poor people here through water, sanitation and hygiene education projects and none will be able to work if the unrest continues,'' he said.
(END/2007)
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