A light morning drizzle and an early morning explosion set the pitch for the day crucial for Bangladesh’s immediate future.
Unidentified miscreants lobbed explosive ‘cocktails’ in front of the Minister Suranjit Sengupta’s residence at Dhaka’s Jigatala.
Sengupta blamed the Opposition for the explosions, though none was injured.
But as the Opposition BNP prepared for its Friday rally at Suhrawardy Udyan, the ruling Awami League, denied permission for a rally in the capital, said its workers will be “out on the streets to prevent any disorder”.
That is what has raised the heckles — a possible confrontation leading to an ugly conflagration that could queer the pitch for a peaceful, inclusive elections.
Reflective of the mood of the citizenry, the roads in the capital appeared deserted.
BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia will address the rally at Suhrawardy Udyan — the venue settled after much haggling between the Opposition Party and the police.
“From Friday, this government is illegal,” Khaleda Zia told a teachers rally on Thursday, flagging off the confrontation that appears inevitable unless she gives up on her demand to have the parliament polls held under a neutral caretaker dispensation.
Neutral caretakers have conducted parliament polls in Bangladesh since mid 1990s to lend a veneer of fairness to the elections bitterly contested by the country’s two rival coalitions, one led by the Awami League and the other by the BNP.
That has ensured a change of guard every five years since the country returned to democracy from military rule in 1990.
But the last caretaker, strongly supported by the military, went beyond its brief to conduct polls after Khaleda Zia’s government stepped down in 2006.
Instead of a few months, they stayed in power for nearly two years, far longer than mandated by the Constitution.
The electorate stamped their displeasure on the ballot when the country finally went to polls in Dec 2008 and the Awami League-led coalition returned to power with a huge mandate.
Soon after, latching on to a court verdict that declared the caretaker system ‘illegal’ and ‘incompatible with the spirit of Bangladesh constitution’ , the Awami League led coalition introduced and carried through the 15th constitution amendment with its huge majority in the parliament.
The caretaker system was scrapped, but that was the beginning of the trouble that now plagues the country.
The Opposition, decimated in the Dec 2008 polls, did not accept the amendment and the end of the caretaker system.
Without the neutral caretaker, no election in Bangladesh could be a free and fair, said Khaleda Zia, as her supporters hit the streets to start a running campaign to restore the caretaker system — by street power, as it lacked the numbers in parliament.
That has not worked so far.
The Awami League has stridently opposed a return to the caretaker, saying it will obstruct the “free flow of democracy”.
The ruling party, that led Bangladesh to its independence, argues that its government has conducted ‘free and fair polls’ in the city corporations and other local bodies — its candidates have been trounced in many of them.
The defeats raised the spectre of anti-incumbency but undermined fears of partisanship in conduct of polls , but the Opposition would take no chances.
So Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina proposed last week an all-party interim body to supervise the polls in a bid to win Opposition confidence — without spelling out who will head it and how will it be constituted.
The BNP has indicated it wants to negotiate a deal to be able to contest the polls — but worried that if would not be fair if conducted under the present government, they placed a proposal in parliament for restoring the caretaker system.
It is to push for the neutral caretaker that the BNP is organising its Friday rally in Suhrawardy Udyan.
Though the police refused permission for a rally by the Awami League on the same day to avoid a possible confrontation, the ruling party leaders have asked workers to be out on vigil.
BNP’s former Dhaka Mayor Sadegh Hossain Khoka’s call to ‘armed resistance’ has given the Awami League the raison d’etre for its plans for street vigil — rather than leave it to the police and the law-enforcing agencies.
But that is what worries the citizenry — a possible turf war between rival supporters, likely to be armed rather than otherwise.
The government has said it will use ‘law to the fullest’ to curb violence.
Scores of heavily-armed borderguards have joined thousands of policemen and RAB personnel in Dhaka and other leading cities to prevent trouble.
Bdnews24.com’s Suliman Niloy and Salahuddin Wahed Pritom report heavy deployment of security forces at all crucial road intersections ahead of the BNP rally.
So as the countdown begins on the 10th parliament polls, that must be held in the next three months , anytime before Jan 24 2014, apprehensions mount about whether the polls would be free, fair, inclusive and peaceful.
The Election Commission has promised that — but the citizenry is far from convinced.
Oct 25 is the day Bangladesh wants to pass off peacefully with bated breath, because in some ways , it is not just the beginning of the countdown to the elections.
It is when the countdown begins on Bangladesh’s future.
Source: Bd news24
