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POLITICS-BANGLADESH: Uncertainty Grips Scheduled Elections
By Farid Ahmed
DHAKA, Nov 19, 2008 (IPS) - Parliamentary elections in Bangladesh, scheduled for Dec.18, are now slipping into uncertainty with former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia demanding that a state of emergency imposed by the military-backed, interim government be completely lifted first.
While the Zia's Bangaldesh National Party (BNP) wants the polls deferred, the Awami League party of Zia's arch political rival Sheikh Hasina Wajed insists that polls be held in December. Political analysts said the elections would not be credible if the polls are boycotted by either of these two major parties.
Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries and home to 160 milllion people has, for almost two years now, been run by a military-backed, interim government of technocrats headed by former World Bank official Fakhruddin Ahmed.
Half of the 11-member interim cabinet had hectic meetings with the two parties on Tuesday but failed to reach any consensus. On Monday, Zia, at a press briefing, set an ultimatum to the government to meet her party’s demands.
Foreign donors and diplomats stationed in Dhaka also had several meeting with Zia and Hasina Wajed over the past week, underlining the need for an election participated in by all major political parties.
In January 2007 it was Hasina Wajed who announced a boycott of the polls, accusing the caretaker government and the Election Commission (EC) of being biased towards the BNP, while Zia insisted on holding the polls as then scheduled on Jan. 22, 2007.
Zia now accuses the EC reconstituted under the military-backed government of favouring the Awami League.
The two women, who have hardly talked to each other over the last 17 years, rotated in power from 1991. Their mutual hatred and personal rivalry dominated Bangladesh's politics during that period.
Political analyst Prof. Ataur Rahman of Dhaka University explained to IPS that the two major parties wanted to be sure to win the polls. "As a party feels it might lose, its joining in polls becomes uncertain."
Rahman said there was no alternative to elections and a smooth return to democracy. "If the elections are not held, the country will go back to square one," he said. "At the same time we can't expect that everything will be perfectly all right even after elections, if the [main] political parties do not change their approach."
While the deadline for submission of nomination papers is set for Thursday, there is little sign of the BNP announcing the names of its candidates.
Already the EC has shifted the deadline twice to accommodate the BNP should it wish to join the polls. The body has hinted that the election date could be deferred but not beyond December.
"As time passes by, certainty peters out. Two years have gone by under a state of emergency... it's a suffocating situation," a college teacher Shihab Ahmed told IPS in Dhaka.
Like Ahmed, many people are frustrated and blame the country’s two top leaders for failing to reach a settlement and causing the military to intervene.
As the troops marched through Dhaka and elsewhere in the country last year, the Ahmad government appeared tough. It tried to put an end to the feud between the two women leaders, first by sending them to exile and later by detaining them in jail on corruption charges. But new parties or leaders failed to emerge.
Initially, the Ahmad government enjoyed popular support. But its failure to arrest price hikes, curb corruption and improve law and order frustrated the people who now want the military-backed government to go as soon as possible and hand over power to an elected government through free, fair and credible elections.
"It's evident that the people's support for this unelected government is waning," said businessman Shamsul Islam. "Nothing changed in the past two years, people rather saw thousands of mills workers losing jobs and exorbitant price hikes of essentials that has pushed four million people below the poverty line," he said.
The Berlin-based global corruption watchdog Transparency International, in its 2008 report, said corruption was still rampant in the country.
Both Zia and Hasina Wajed, now released on bail, have had several rounds of talks with government representatives on the conduct of the polls.
Observers said Zia, who served as prime minister until October 2006, has sought time to reorganise her party which has been hit hard by the Ahmad government's anti-corruption drive with many of its former lawmakers still in jail on graft charges.
Hasina Wajed insists that the polls be held as scheduled because the Awami League is better prepared and has begun nominating its people.
Leading businessmen and economists fear that any further political instability would adversely impact the country's fragile economy that has already been hit hard by the ongoing global financial meltdown.
The government has said it would do everything necessary for the conduct of free, fair and credible polls and has eased some provisions of the emergency to allow for electioneering. But all political parties, including the Awami League, have been demanding a complete withdrawal of emergency before the polls.
"The main aim of the government is the participation of all parties in the election and, to that end, all initiatives will be taken," a key member in the interim cabinet, Hossain Zillur Rahman, said on Tuesday.
A retired top bureaucrat and an adviser to a former caretaker government, Akbar Ali Khan, commented: "The interim government burdened itself with too many tasks beyond its capacity to implement within a limited span of time and then tried to remove the two former premiers from politics...the goals were too ambitious."
(END)
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