Crisis worsens in BD as opposition vows to boycott polls
DHAKA: Bangladesh risks delayed elections, emergency rule and even a possible coup unless a speedy compromise can be found between the opposition and caretaker government on electoral reforms, analysts said on Wednesday.
The South Asian nation of 144 million people, long plagued by poverty, corruption, natural disasters and political feuding, has been in turmoil since the Bangladesh Nationalist Party's five-year mandate expired in October.
The opposition accuses the caretaker government, headed by President Iajuddin Ahmed, of seeking to rig scheduled January 23 elections in favour of the outgoing right-of-centre Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
The president's “real aim is to serve the BNP”, a leader of the main opposition Awami League, Amir Hossain Amu, said.
Politics in the country has long been marked by a bitter rivalry between the BNP led by Khaleda Zia and left-leaning Awami League headed by Sheikh Hasina Wajed.
Now, with the opposition vowing to boycott the parliamentary polls, events are reaching crisis point in the congested low-lying nation where 60 million people live on less than one dollar a day.
“This is a very serious turn. All the political stakeholders in the country have now reached a point that there seems to be no room for negotiations,” said Dhaka University political science professor Ataur Rahman.
The president called out the army on Sunday in what he said was a move “to ensure security”.
Violence has claimed at least 34 lives during weeks of unrest and the opposition has threatened non-stop protests to force electoral changes.
The move sparked the resignations of four cabinet members, who said it “violated the democratic process”.
The opposition is now demanding Iajuddin step down as head of the caretaker government, saying fair elections are impossible with him at the helm. But he is refusing.
Iajuddin, who was named Bangladesh president by the BNP, appointed himself head of the caretaker government, which is tasked under the constitution with overseeing the polls. He said he could find no other suitable candidate.
“If the election is not held or there's an opposition boycott, it may lead the way for a military takeover,” said Dhaka University law professor Asif Nazrul.
“The instability and the sense of insecurity in the country may reach a point where a majority of people may welcome a military takeover,” he added.
Bangladesh is no stranger to coups.
Hasina's father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, chief of the independence movement that freed Bangladesh from Pakistani rule in 1971 and who served as head of the first government, was slain along with much of his family in a 1975 coup by discontented army officers.
Zia's husband, General Ziaur Rahman, emerged as the country's military strongman after an army counter-coup. He lifted martial rule in 1979 after being elected as head of a BNP government. But he was assassinated two years later in a botched coup and was succeeded as president by Abdus Sattar.
A year later, in 1982, General Ershad seized power in a coup, lifting martial rule four years later when he was elected to a five-year term.
In 1991, Khaleda Zia was elected president at the head of the BNP.
Since then, enmity between Zia and Hasina has poisoned politics, with each party staging paralysing protests aimed at ousting the other, depending on which party is in power.
“There's now practically no chance the elections will be held on time,” political analyst Nazim Kamran Chowdhury said.
Instead of a coup, many analysts see more likelihood of emergency rule being imposed, curbing civil liberties.
Many Bangladesh commentators say they believe democracy has become too well entrenched for a coup and it would be opposed by the burgeoning middle class.
Analyst Shakhawat Hossin, a retired senior army officer, said he saw only a “remote chance” of a coup “but there is a chance the president may declare an emergency”.
On Tuesday, US-based Human Rights Watch appealed to Bangladesh's military to stay neutral.
“Past experience with Bangladeshi leaders deploying the military gives us serious cause for concern,” said Brad Adams, the group's Asia director.—AFP
