Shaikh Hasina Takes Over From Khalida Zia in Successful Bangladesh Election

by M.M. Ali

As projected by the Washington Report (May/June 1996), the Awami League leader, Shaikh Hasina Wajid, emerged as the winner in the June 12th elections held in Bangladesh by a non-partisan interim government.

The combined opposition had boycotted the Assembly (national parliament) for the past two years, protesting against corruption and election rigging by Khaleda Zia’s Bangla National Party (BNP). Zia tried to ignore opposition parties and ruled the country without their participation. She held elections in February of this year, with the opposition once again boycotting the polls. This led to political unrest in the country and administration soon was brought to a stand-still.

Under pressure, Khaleda Zia agreed to the appointment of a non-partisan interim government to hold new elections. The constitution was duly amended to provide for such an arrangement. This time the Awami League won 147 seats in a House of 300 and, with the cooperation of the Jatiya Party (31 seats) and the Jamaat-e-Islami (3 seats), Shaikh Hasina has been able to achieve a majority and has become the prime minister of Bangladesh.

The constitution allows the majority party to name 30 women to the Assembly. That would provide a comfortable majority to the Awami League in the legislature. However, Khaleda Zia’s BNP also won a respectable 116 seats in the Assembly, despite the serious charges of corruption leveled against the BNP prior to the election.

In order to understand the June outcome in Bangladesh, it is necessary to know how three women came to lead political parties in a society where women still have a long way to go in occupying meaningful positions in the political field.

Bangladesh, the former East Pakistan, came into being in December 1971 when, with the help of India, it declared its independence under the leadership of Shaikh Mujibur Rehman, father of Hasina, who headed the Awami League. Within three years, in August 1975, Shaikh Mujibur Rehman, along with his wife and three sons, was brutally murdered while Hasina was visiting Europe.

Strangely, the man who confessed to the killings, Maj. Sharif ul Huq, later was inducted into the foreign service of Bangladesh. He served in various posts abroad before retiring recently as ambassador to Kenya.

Lt. Gen. Ziaur Rehman, husband of Khaleda Zia, came into power but he, too, was killed in a military coup. He was followed by Lt. Gen. H.M. Ershad in 1982.

Zia had created the Bangla National Party and Ershad formed the Jatiya Party. Ershad remained in power until 1991, when he was replaced through “special elections” and was charged with embezzling public funds. Since then Ershad has remained in jail and his wife, Raushan, now heads the Jatiya Party.

In 1991 the BNP, with Khaleda Zia as its leader, was elected to office. Now the Awami League under Shaikh Hasina has returned after 21 years out of power.

The Awami League of 1996 is a very different party than it was in 1975.

The Awami League of 1996, however, is a very different party than it was in 1975. Shaikh Mujib had advocated near-socialist policies and had only the right-wing Muslim League in opposition. The Awami League today has a different face. It stands for an open market free enterprise system.

Meanwhile the Muslim League has died. BNP, now the principal opposition party, ideologically is not too different from the Awami League. The June elections marginalized the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami, which won only 3 seats out of 300 despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of Bangladesh’s 120 million inhabitants are Muslims.

A significant aspect of the June elections was the emergence of women as a solid voting bloc. According to Chief Election Commissioner Abu Hena, “a record 73 percent of the 57 million eligible voters cast their ballots” and, of these, the majority were women. This impressive turnout was in contrast to the low voter participation in the February polls that were boycotted by the opposition parties. No fewer than 250 international observers from all over the world witnessed the June elections. Almost all delegations, including a U.S. group led by former Congressman Stephen Solarz, certified that the polls were “fair and free.”

With 147 Awami League seats in a House of 300 and an added 30 nominated women’s seats, Shaikh Hasina can use the 31 seats of the Jatiya Party to form a coalition government, but she is not totally dependent on the JP for political survival. Nevertheless she is likely to free imprisoned Jatiya Party leader Mohammed Ershad so that he can join her in a coalition government. Several of the charges against him have been dropped and he already has been in detention for almost five years. Hasina is in a position to pardon him, but also to dictate the terms upon which she is willing to give him his freedom.

Hasina has also to keep in mind a recent incident in which a section of the army tried to assert itself but was quashed by President Biswas. During the interim period between Bangladesh’s February and June elections, senior military officers including Maj. Gen. G.H. Murshed Khan and Brig. Hameedur Rehman issued statements that expressed dissatisfaction at the country’s state of affairs. President Biswas drew the attention of Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Abu Saleh Mohammed Nasim to the two officers. When Nasim did not respond, the president dismissed the two named officers by going through the Ministry of Defense rather than the army headquarters.

After General Nasim protested, President Biswas removed him as well. For the time being, the trouble seems to have been resolved in favor of the civilian administration. Nonetheless, Hasina will have to watch the military, and in this regard Mohammed Ershad can help.

A Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and South Asia

When it all started 40 years ago, the effort for a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty (CTBT) was to contain the nuclear threat that had spread to just four industrialized powers, the U.S., U.S.S.R., Britain and France. When the effort to create a CTBT was revived four years ago, there were three holdouts. This year, after the originally targeted deadline of June 28 had passed, there still were three holdouts—India, Israel and Pakistan.

It was hoped that the new government in New Delhi would do some fresh thinking on the subject and agree to sign the CTBT. In no uncertain terms, however, a spokesman for the government of India said: “The proposed draft will make the CTBT only a nuclear test weapon explosion treaty. This was not the [treaty] that India had envisaged in 1954.” Pakistan has made it clear it will only sign the treaty if India does.

India’s defiance comes despite strong U.S. support for a CTBT. The proposed treaty also has the support of the other nuclear powers that now include China. Although the other nuclear powers are willing to wait until every nation agrees to the language of the treaty, the U.S. has been urging them to go ahead and sign the CTBT, even if the holdouts do not.

China, which until recently insisted on exempting “peaceful tests,” now has withdrawn that demand and has joined the other original four nuclear-capable powers.

Interestingly, three countries are quoted as holding up the signing of the CTBT but only India and Pakistan are pointedly mentioned as the obstructionists, while Israel, although believed to possess between 200 to 300 nuclear weapons, is only referred to in passing and is not subjected to any scrutiny or explanation. India is too familiar with the Western sacred cow and the double standards that Washington applies.

New Delhi takes the high moral ground because of the way in which recent French and Chinese nuclear tests were treated. Both the countries enjoy “most favored nation” treatment by the United States. India also knows that corporate America, which has started heavy investments in the large Indian market, will not allow the U.S. administration to penalize India on a treaty draft that has holes in it. Perhaps Michael Krepon of the Stimson Center in Washington, DC made an objective analysis when he remarked: “It means one of two things: either the treaty never enters into force or it does so after India and Pakistan have carried out (nuclear) test programs” (Washington Post, June 18, 1996).