The comprehensive defeat of Awami League candidates in five-city corporation polls in June-July has raised the spectre of a regime change in Bangladesh. The trend of anti-incumbency seems to have dogged the Awami League since its Chittagong mayor A B M Mohiuddin lost out barely a year after the party’s landslide in the December 2008 parliament polls. But the defeats in June-July, barely five-six months before parliament polls are due in Bangladesh, provide cause for serious introspection.
That concern also extends to India whose position could dramatically change if Sheikh Hasina and the League are voted out of power and an Islamist regime with the Jamaat-e-Islami in the coalition assumes power. Foreign minister Dipu Moni warned during her Delhi visit that the Awami League would suffer if India did not go ahead with the Teesta river water-sharing treaty and implement the land boundary agreement, that is stuck in Parliament with the BJP and some regional parties opposing it.
