By IANS,
Dhaka : Bangladesh’s military-backed interim government has mounted efforts to bring together the two battling begums – former prime ministers Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina who have been provisionally freed from detention – to prepare for the December parliamentary polls.
“We will bring the two leaders across the table to create an atmosphere of trust and a new mode in politics,” Commerce and Education Adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman told reporters after Zia, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chairperson, was Thursday released on bail after more than a year’s imprisonment.
Her arch rival and Awami League (AL) president Hasina, now on parole and seeking medical treatment abroad, is scheduled to return later this month.
“The two leaders contributed a lot to politics and we hope they will continue doing so,” the adviser was quoted as saying by the New Age newspaper Friday.
The chiefs of the two major political parties of the country have not been seen together or known to have spoken in over a decade now.
“Our aim is to hold a meaningful election with the participation of all, make qualitative changes in politics, ensure post-election stability and economic prosperity,” the adviser said.
He expected a positive reaction to the government’s move. However, the first spanner in the works was delivered by acting Awami League president Zillur Rahman, who demanded that Hasina be “freed permanently” before any initiatives to get political rivals to sit across the table.
Political developments should move fast in the coming weeks, said The Daily Star newspaper in an editorial entitled “Now let’s get on with election campaign”.
“Ultimately, both BNP and AL are indispensable to elections. Polls without one or other of the two parties would run the risk of lacking credibility in the public eye and would likely not have provided the foundation needed for functional politics in the future. Thus, the government was, in the final analysis, obligated to do pretty much whatever was necessary to bring the parties to the table,” said the editorial.
Parliamentary polls were cancelled in Bangladesh in January 2007 after weeks of political turmoil. The last 18 months have seen the provisional government conducting a drive against corruption, nabbing many VVIPs.
Zia, released on bail after 53 weeks, promptly agreed to sit with the government and participate in the elections. Hasina has already done this in June when she was freed. Her party also contested the civic polls last month.
Zia got down to work immediately on release, talking to her principal political ally – the Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party.
She also tackled the home front and a major political irritant in the person of her ailing politician-son Tarique Rahman, who has been freed on bail. She announced that Tarique, BNP’s senior joint scretary general, would remain out of politics for two to three years as he would be abroad for treatment.
She paid an emotional visit to the hospital to meet Tarique, whose spinal cord is said to be severely damaged. He flew to Britain for medical treatment.
“You must think that I am very happy that I am free now. But I am not because we as well as the country are not well,” a weeping Zia told a packed press conference at the party office here.
Meanwhile, the AL was hit by an unexpected snag with two of its top officials getting into a wrangle. The party confirmed joint general secretary Syed Ashraful Islam as acting general secretary hours after Abdul Jalil, who had been in Singapore for medical treatment, returned to his general secretary post.
The New Age said Hasina was said to be unhappy with Jalil who, while in jail last year, had resigned the post without consulting her in order to win the government’s permission to be freed on bail and proceed to Singapore for medical treatment.