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28/10/2006 | BANGLADESH - Conditions Conducive to a Coup?

Stratfor Staff

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia will turn over power on Oct. 27 to a caretaker government charged with overseeing Bangladesh's national election, scheduled for January 2007.

 

The interim government will be led by retired chief justice KM Hasan, whom the opposition Awami League has deemed unacceptably close to Zia's Bangladeshi Nationalist Party (BNP). The BNP will not be able to win an honest election, and will thus have to rely on extra-constitutional measures to retain power, which could lead to the traditional Bangladeshi power transfer: the military coup.


Bangladeshi Prime Minister and head of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Khaleda Zia will transfer power to a caretaker government led by retired chief justice KM Hasan at midnight on Oct. 27. Hasan's duty is to neutrally oversee Bangladesh's national elections, but the opposition Awami League has accused him of being a BNP stooge.

His appointment is unacceptable to the leftist-secular Awami League, which believes that the rightist-Islamist BNP government cheated it during the last election; the BNP won 40.97 percent of the popular vote and got 193 seats in the 300-seat parliament, while the Awami League won 40.13 percent of the vote and received a meager 62 seats.

The BNP is even weaker than it was during the last election and will have to resort to fraud if it hopes to maintain control of the country. Current estimates put the BNP's popular support somewhere between 10 percent and 20 percent, with many voters still undecided. Several hundred veteran BNP loyalists -- including former Bangladeshi President AQM Badruddoza Chowdhury and BNP standing committee member retired Col. Oli Ahmed -- have deserted the party to form a new group, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

The LDP deserters -- several of whom are, like Ahmed, retired high-ranking military officers -- charge the BNP with being too corrupt and too lax in cracking down on Islamist extremism, a sentiment echoed by the Awami League, which charged that the BNP's Islamist-allied government supports the activities of jihadist groups such as Jamaat al Mujahideen Bangladesh and Harkat-ul-Jihad e-Islami. The LDP members appear to be old-guard BNP members dissatisfied with the direction that Zia's son, Tarique Rahman, seems to be moving the party. The BNP has said the deserters are opportunistic and fearful that the next generation of BNP rulers will not bestow them with the offices and positions they seek. The BNP has also begun attacking the residences of some of the deserters.

Concurrently, Awami League protesters are engaging in massive clashes with security forces and blocking the highway from the industrial sector surrounding Dhaka to Bangladesh's main port at Chittagong, and there is no indication that they will stop unless a new caretaker government is selected or the army comes out and starts shooting.

Indeed, the caretaker government could be forced to declare emergency law and dispatch the armed forces to quell the rioters. The Awami League has been preparing for this election for the past five years and will only continue to mobilize. A move to declare emergency law will simultaneously restore order and conveniently suspend the rights of many Awami League voters, allowing the BNP and its Islamist allies to "win" the election in January.

If the BNP or its Islamist allies fraudulently win the national election in January, or if the constitution is suspended, a military coup is a distinct possibility. There is an increasing sense that Islamist militants have been thriving in Bangladesh under the BNP -- a situation much of the military does not like. A declaration of emergency law and the suspension of the constitution -- or fraudulent elections -- will be, in effect, a civilian coup by the BNP, as popular opinion is decidedly against Zia's party. Retired Lt. Gen. Mir Shawkat Ali -- a famous freedom fighter and a likely participant in a 1981 coup -- went so far as to suggest that Bangladeshi politicians go on holiday for two years to give the country time to develop and create a more neutral political environment.

Bangladeshis have resorted to coups dozens of times in their short history when power-transfer mechanisms broke down; more than 22 coup attempts were made against Zia's now-dead husband and former dictator Gen. Ziaur Rahman alone during his reign from 1975-1981. Rahman himself came to power during a countercoup in 1975 after he cooperated with and then turned on the coup leader. The 22nd coup attempt, in 1981, killed Rahman and was followed by a bloodless coup in 1982. In 1990, the military withdrew support from the current dictatorship and got behind a popular uprising. If chaos continues to reign in Bangladesh, several more coups could be in store for Dhaka.

Stratfor (Estados Unidos)

 



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