From: medhadps <medhadps@yahoo.com>
To: BdOsint@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 9:18:58 AM
Subject: [BdOsInt Monitors] Bangladesh: The Coming Political Alignment
Although the contents of that meeting are not widely known, they are going to prove crucial as to how the government's last six months pass. Sheikh Hasina, long this military government's most outspoken and strident critic, has maintained a studious silence over the military government. This silence, added with the fact that the top Bangladeshi diplomats in England and the United States went to receive her when she landed in these countries, have added to these speculations.
As Jyoti Rahman has pointed out, that Bangladesh's politics is currently a three-player game, makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to resolve without putting one side out of business. It looks like the current government has picked the AL combine to blunt as much of the BNP-led alliance's protests, before RAB and DGFI take care of the rest.
Personally speaking, I don't think combining with JP will help AL that much. Any combine looks to attract Jatiyo Party for mainly two regions of the country: Greater Rangpur, including Rangpur, Kurigram, and Thakurgaon, and some seats in Sylhet. With JP's vote share shrinking in greater Rangpur every election, there is one party that has been edging them out, and that is AL. This year, I doubt JP would win ten seats in total if they contested elections by themselves.
The military government's original plan was to led the 14-party led alliance led by AL contest by themselves, while JP would lead a Nationalist- lite combine, trying to divert away as many votes and seats away from BNP as possible. However, this would mean that AL would be the governing party, and the JP-led combine, at best, the main opposition party in the parliament. And Ershad does not have time for this. He is already 78; the man who came to state power in Bangladesh twenty-six years ago through a military coup, badly wants another taste of state power for the last years of his life, and he believes that another military coup has given him the perfect opportunity to achieve his goal.
Awami League would probably be better off not aligning with JP. For one thing, this alignment would immediately mean that the heavy artillery they would aim at the BNP in the coming elections about being aligned with Jamaat would automatically be that much less effective. Also, for the January 22nd elections, AL roped in JP, and Bikolpo Dhara, and LDP, and they were still not confident enough that the gains in votes would be enough to offset the seats they had to give up. That these parties will be helpful to the AL in the coming elections is even less helpful.
Sheikh Hasina is trying to survey, from London and Virginia, the extent of damage that AL has suffered in the last two years, and how much loyalty she still retains amongst the AL top leadership. Her old loyalists, like Obaidul Quader and Dr. Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, were among the first people imprisoned by the military government, so as to weaken her grip on the party as much as possible. It remains to be seen what decision she take regarding Ershad, and how much freedom she will have to take such a decision.
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