10 March 2005	Thursday	28 Muharram 1426

DHAKA: Both the power-contending political parties of Bangladesh, the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and opposition Awami League (AL), have recently been exposed to a crisis , particularly in terms of keeping their traditional friends consolidated on the one hand and further expanding their sphere of influence on the other.

The BNP of Prime Minister Begun Khaleda Zia, the largest component of the four-party ruling alliance, has been exposed to difficulties, especially since the government started a crackdown on some Islamist outfits reported to have been involved in violent political activism in the last week of February.

The government steps, particularly the police raid of a certain madrassahs, have irked the Islami Oikkya Jote (IOJ), a component of the ruling combine.

Maulana Fazlul Haq Amini MP, chairmen of the IOJ, in a statement issued to the press on February 27, four days after the crackdown, asked the government to stop raiding madrassahs and 'harassing' their activists in those educational institutions. The IOJ warned that it 'would take a strong position' against the raids on the madrassahs, 'if the government did not stop harassment campaign'.

Expressing his anger over the raids on madrassahs by intelligence agencies, the IOJ leader has publicly accused the Jamaat-i-Islami Bangladesh, the second largest party in the ruling alliance, of masterminding the raids. Besides, he has blamed the Jamaat, obliquely though, for 'political terrorism.'

"Whenever an incident of terrorism happens, they start searching madrassahs to see if there are any arms or training camps," he told a private sector news agency called United News of Bangladesh on March 6.

Clearly, the two components of the BNP-led four-party ruling alliance, Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Oikkya Jote, are at loggerhead over the acts of political violence in Bangladesh, making the top leaders of the BNP concerned over the future of the unity.

The situation turned worse for the BNP on March 9, when Kazi Firoz Rashid, secretary general of Bangladesher Jatiya Party (BJP), another component of the ruling alliance, left the organization to join the Jatiya Party in the opposition camp which is led by former president General H. M. Ershad.

"The Jamaat (which has two ministers on Khaleda Zia's cabinet) has got all the privileges as they claim to be a big partner of the ruling alliance. If that is the case, why should the small parties remain in the alliance?" Feroj Rashid told the press the day before he left the ruling political camp.

Concerned over the bickering among the partners in the ruling four-party alliance, the top leaders of the BNP are desperate to keep the political combine intact. K.M Obaidur Rahman, a member of the BNP presidium, however, does not see any serious problem in the reported bickering among the alliance partners.

Meanwhile, the opposition Awami League, which has so far failed to consolidate its apparent unity with the left and liberal democratic 11-party opposition alliance, is now serious to bridge the gap with the combine on the one hand, and further broaden the anti-government alliance on the other.

In order to solidify unity with the 11-party opposition alliance, the League is under pressure from the latter to pronounce whether the party was ready to translate the present understanding into a concrete electoral alliance in future, and if it so happens, how many parliamentary constituencies the League would be ready to sacrifice for the 11-party to contest from.