A new wave in Bangladesh?

THE MASSIVE MANDATE obtained by Begum Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh National Party and its allies has provoked her chief adversary, Sheikh Hasina, to dispute the fairness of the latest parliamentary election. A stunned Sheikh Hasina is furious over what she regards as ``crude rigging'' under the apolitical caretaker Government that oversaw the arrangements. Bangladesh's current constitutional practice is to hold general elections under caretaker administrations with no manifest links to the competing parties. Sheikh Hasina, who stepped down as Prime Minister at the end of her tenure to pave the way for the latest election to the Jatiya Sangsad, is willing to concede, nonetheless, that the voters were indeed ``free'' to exercise their franchise. By making such an arguably fine distinction, she is eager to point out that only one principle of the democratic dictum about a ``free and fair poll'' has been abided by in Bangladesh at this time. In a sense, this unusual contention seems to have something to do with her abiding faith in the country's self- determinant ``freedom'' which her father, the late Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, had successfully striven for. Yet, the burden of Sheikh Hasina's unorthodox comment is not lost on the national consciousness, with many opinion-makers in Dhaka urging her to accept the electoral verdict and move on as a constructive leader of the opposition with a chance to be Prime Minister yet again in due course. Obviously, the overwhelming concern of the pro-democracy Bangladeshis is that there should be no lurch to the autocracy that their country had witnessed prior to 1991. It is in this context that Sheikh Hasina should reconsider her apparent plans for a campaign against the latest election results, unless incontrovertible evidence can indeed be cited. For the moment, though, the initial comments by several key international poll observers indicate their overall satisfaction with the transparency and general fairness of the October 1 election.

It is an irony that Sheikh Hasina, who was in power prior to the latest general election, should now complain about the integrity of the polling and the vote counting. Yet, she will not call for the abolition of the practice of holding a general election under a caretaker administration. She will not abandon her own ``brainchild'' - the idea of preventing the political parties in power at any given time from influencing the elections that might be held under their direct purview. If Bangladesh had felt constrained to opt for such additional safeguards without relying exclusively on autonomous bodies to conduct polls, the fragility of its democratic fabric is the prime consideration. While violence has often marred the politics of this densely populated South Asian state, it deserves praise for having stayed the democratic course so far. However, the immediate future of this democracy will be determined by the gathering political confrontation between Sheikh Hasina and Begum Zia.

A matter of electoral arithmetic is that Begum Zia's allies, who advocate a narrow Islam-oriented political agenda, may have actually contributed handsomely to the stunning margin of her victory. Now that her triumphal return to power as Prime Minister seems assured, Begum Zia has struck the right note by asking her followers to practise political tolerance. ``Terrorism'' or acute lawlessness across the country and a corruption-ridden economy have been identified as her immediate challenges. While Sheikh Hasina is widely seen as a proactive champion of Bangladesh's democracy, her record in office left much to be desired. Begum Zia, on the other hand, seems to have begun well on several counts. She says that Bangladesh will not become a religion-based state in spite of the preferences of some of her allies. This pledge should not be mistakenly interpreted as an answer to the current international confusion over religion and politics. However, no such note applies to her stated agenda for regional diplomacy - good neighbourly relations with India and a revival of the South Asian spirit.

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