The general election in Bangladesh has not evoked the same degree of attention in the international news media as the recent elections in India, Israel and the Russian Federation . It is however, of critical importance to a country striving diligently to tread the path of democracy to economic and social development.
The second general election within four months in Bangaladesh has resulted in the Awami League (AL) beating its arch rival the Bangaladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) by the barest of margins. The earlier election held on February 15 this year at the end of the term of Begum Khaleda Zia's government was boycotted by all the opposition parties. The resulting agitation in the country spearheaded by Khaleda's bitter opponent, Sheikh Hasina Wazed, forced Khaleda to agree to hold another election under the auspices of a caretaker Prime Minister, Muhammed Habibur Rahman, a former Chief Justice.
More than 80 parties and 2,500 candidates contested the polls, the main contesting parties being the Bangaladesh Nationalist Party led by Begum Khaleda Zia and the Awami League of Sheikh Hasina Wazed, other candidates were from the Jatiya Party (JT) whose election campaign was directed from a Dhaka jail by ex-president Hossain Mohammed Ershard, the Jammat-i-Islami the biggest religious-based political party and the Left Democratic Front (LDF), a conglomerate of eight left -leaning parties, and smaller groups.
International observers monitoring the election of June 12 have found it to be generally 'free and fair'. Credit for a relatively smooth poll, in which 73 percent of the voters participated, must go to Chief Election Commissioner, Mohamed Abu Hena, and to the caretaker Prime Minister. The appointment of a non-partisan neutral person as Chief Adviser ( and caretaker Prime Minister) goes to the President was made possible by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, with a well-defined mandate, and these arrangements would be a regular feature in future general elections.
Out of 299 seats declared, after a re-poll had been ordered by the Commissioner of Elections in 27 constituencies, where violence disrupted the election, the Awami League has secured 147 seats, the BNP 116, the Jatiya Party 31, the Jammat-i-Islami party 2 and two other parties I each. Under the Bangaladesh constitution the party gaining a majority can nominate 30 women to parliament. The results show that both fundamentalists and communists in Bangaladesh have been routed. The Jatiya Party has pledged its support for the Avami League and Sheikh Hasina, the leader of the Awami League is anxiously awaiting a call from President Abdur Rahman Biswas early next week to form the next government.
Bangaladesh (formerly East Pakistan) which broke away from Pakistan in 1971, has been under military rule for 15 out of its 25 years of independence. The bitter rivalry between Sheikh Hasina and Begum Zia goes back many years to the 1970s and two tragic assassinations Sheikh Hasina's father Bangabhandur Sheikh Mujibar Rahman formed the Awami League, after leading his country to independence from Pakistan in 1971. Mujibur Rahman soon turned Bangaladesh into a one-party state and was obsessed with socialist policies, which resulted in economic stagnation. He was assassinated on August 15, 1975 in the presidential palace in a bloody army coup in which Hasina's mother and three brothers also died.
Khaleda Zia's husband, Major General Ziaur Rahman, seized power a few months later in a bloodless coup and ruled with the help of the armed forces, unshackling Bangaladesh from a socialist economy until he himself was assassinated in May 18, 1981 by dissident army officers. General Hossain Mohammed Ershard was installed as president and ruled for nine years. Khaleda and Hasina came together in 1990 to topple and imprison Earshad after conviction on charges of corruption but the two leading women politicians of Bangaladesh have thereafter been in a confrontational mode and were opposed to each other in the 1991 general election which brought Khaleda to power.
Bangaladesh is one the poorest countries in the world, with a population of 120 million and is continually afflicted by natural disasters like tropical cyclones, tidal waves, floods and drought which cause serious setbacks to economic development. The influence of the armed forces continues to be felt in government. In fact, Khaleda Zia's 'kitchen cabinet' is said to have consisted of four army officers all of them candidates in the recent elections. The major parties fielded a large number of army officers as candidates. The Military is bound to have an influence on the future government as well.
The manifestos of the two main parties, The BNP and the Awami League, showed little difference. Both contained promises now commonplace in the manifestos of most political parties in South Asia-transparency in governance, establishment of the rule of law and corruption-free society, subsidies for the agricultural sector, industrialization, land reform, autonomy for the state-run media, and the separation of the judiciary from the executive. The crucial question of resource availability to implement election promises is missing from both manifestos.
In announcing the 21 point Awami League manifesto, Sheikh Hasina, in a rare show of humility, apologized and sought forgiveness for " some mistakes" of the past and made a fervent appeal to the people to cast their votes for the Awami League and to "give her party a chance to serve the nation". She promised to "change the political cult of arrogance". In fact, accusations of arrogance, inexperience and corruption have been made against BNP rule. The BNP, less secular in outlook included in its manifesto four fundamental principles absolute trust and faith in Almighty Allah, nationalism, democracy and socialism. Both the BNP and the Awami League have decided not to renew the 25 year old Friendship Treaty with India which comes up for renewal in 1997.
Shiekh Hasina's father Shiekh Mujibur Rahman, signed a Treaty of Friendship with India in the wake of independence and the Awami League has been suspect ever since as a party having close ties with India. Although India helped Bangladesh to liberate herself from Pakistan, misunderstandings have arisen between Bangaladesh and India.
Water has been an important factor in lndo-Bangladeshi relations and water-sharing with India figures in a big way in electioneering. Some 54 of the 230 rivers of Bangaladesh originate in India and the country faces a serious water shortage when there is unilateral withdrawal of water by India in the upper streams of these rivers during the dry season. The story of the Farakka barrage is well known and has been raised even at the United Nations in 1975 where a consensus resolution urged both countries to solve the issue through negotiations.
The Farakka barrage issue has its origins in 1951 when the Pakistan government came to know that India had an intention of building a barrage across the Ganges at Farakka, some 17 miles upstream from the point of entry of the river into Bangladesh. The object was evidently to impound the water and to divert it through an artificially excavated canal to a point in West Bengal with the ostensible purpose of flushing the port of Calcutta. Pakistan had brought the matter to the attention of the Indian authorities who, the Bangladeshi's allege, side-tracked the issue, which Bangladesh inherited after independence in 1971.
Bangladeshis felt that, after the assistance received from India in the independence struggle, the issue would be speedily solved. Some meetings were held and there was hope for a solution but the issue dragged on for a few more years until in 1977, during the period of the Janata government in India, when the two countries agreed to share the waters of the Ganges, with Bangladesh receiving some 34,000 cusecs of water during the dry season. But the dispute does not seem to have been finally settled. All parties at the recent election agreed to reach a definite agreement with India on the equitable sharing of the waters of the Ganges and other rivers, common to India and to Bangladesh.
After a long period of military dictatorships, the fragile and fledgling democracy in Bangladesh deserves a period of stability for economic development and the upliftment of the living standards of its people. National reconciliation is the need of the hour and the two main contending parties must put behind them the blood feud over the 1975 and 1980 assassinations, which made the country hostage to personal enmities.
Bangaladesh's firm friends in South Asia, including Sri Lanka, would hope that the new government and the opposition parties would rise to meet the challenge, which the people have imposed on them, through the verdict at the polls. Failure to do so might mean more strikes and street demonstrations, which have crippled the country over the past two years, and even a reversion to military rule. Sheikh Hasina has struck the right note when, in her first post-election press conference, she declared in clear terms that "we will run the administration of the country on the basis of national consensus. We will heal the wounds, not create new ones, unite the nation, not divide it.
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