DHAKA, 14 December 2006 — Bangladesh’s embattled President Iajuddin Ahmed said yesterday he was determined to hold a fair and credible election, despite calls from one of the main contestants in next month’s elections for him to step down.
Iajuddin, the ceremonial chief of the armed forces, also said the army he called out to reinforce security ahead of parliamentary polls on Jan. 23 would be neutral.
“The army will act neutrally and not for any party or group,” the president told US Ambassador Patricia A. Butenis, who met him at the presidential palace.
A multiparty alliance led by Hasina Wajed, chief of the Awami League, accuses the president of being partisan toward her rival Khaleda Zia, who ended her five-year term as prime minister late in October.
Iajuddin took over from Khaleda as head of an interim government charged with organizing new elections within three months.
But Hasina, a former prime minister, and her allies have accused the president of bypassing the constitution in deploying the army for election duty and taking orders from Khaleda and her Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
Hasina said on Tuesday Iajuddin “should step down as head of the interim authority to give the people a chance to exercise their franchise in a free and fair vote.”
“The president has failed to prove his neutrality and acted to appease (the one) who made him the president,” she said, referring to Khaleda.
The two women fell out after joining forces to topple a military government in a people power movement in 1990 and have been bitter rivals since. They have not spoken to each other for a decade or more.
Hasina and her allies accuse some top officials at the Election Commission of also favoring Khaleda and the BNP in the coming polls, and want them removed immediately.
Iajuddin appointed four advisers on Tuesday, to replace four others who quit on Monday following differences with him over the deployment of army.
Hasina’s alliance said the new advisers were “not acceptable because they were all loyal to the president and unable to act neutrally.”
The president ordered the deployment on Saturday to assist the civil administration ahead of the polls, after 44 people were killed and hundreds injured in clashes between rival political activists in the past six weeks.
BNP Secretary-General Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan said on Tuesday “the country now has a fully congenial atmosphere for a free and impartial election, and that Awami League should join it.” Hasina’s alliance has called for a siege of election offices all over the country today.
“Very much we want to participate in the election, but not until we are convinced that voting would be honest, impartial and credible,” Awami League General Secretary Abdul Jalil said.
Analysts said yesterday Bangladesh risks delayed elections, emergency rule and even a possible coup unless a speedy compromise can be found between the opposition and caretaker government on electoral reforms.
The opposition accuses the caretaker government of seeking to rig scheduled Jan. 23 elections in favor of the outgoing right-of-center Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
The president’s “real aim is to serve the BNP,” a leader of the main opposition Awami League, Amir Hossain Amu, said.
Now, with the opposition vowing to boycott the parliamentary polls, events are reaching crisis point in the congested low-lying nation where 60 million people live on less than one dollar a day.
“This is a very serious turn. All the political stakeholders in the country have now reached a point that there seems to be no room for negotiations,” said Dhaka University political science professor Ataur Rahman.
The president called out the army Sunday in what he said was a move “to ensure security.”
“If the election is not held or there’s an opposition boycott, it may lead the way for a military takeover,” said Dhaka University law professor Asif Nazrul.
“The instability and the sense of insecurity in the country may reach a point where a majority of people may welcome a military takeover,” he added.
