The Personal Politics of Bangladesh
Feuding Women Lead Top Parties
Former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, alleging bias by the interim government in the election process, announced Wednesday that her coalition would boycott the vote.
(By Shawkat Khan -- Associated Press)
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Sunday, January 7, 2007
DHAKA, Bangladesh -- For 15 years Bangladesh has been dominated by the revolving-door premiership of two women whose rivalry is among the most ferocious in the democratic world.
Former president Jimmy Carter tried to get Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina to shake hands in 2004, but couldn't even persuade them to look at each other. At a party in November, the two held court in different corners of the room.
It's the stuff of political slapstick, except that this feud is rooted in the assassination of one woman's father and the other's husband, and the result today is anything but funny.
"We have floods, cyclones, many people die. But Zia and Hasina are worse," said Abul Islam, a 51-year-old Dhaka shop owner. "The two ladies are our worst disaster."
Many Bangladeshis -- illiterate men pedaling rickshaws through Dhaka's squalid streets, or educated women sipping tea in stately homes -- will say the rivalry is the cause of all the country's problems of poverty and corruption.
That's an overstatement, perhaps; those problems existed before 1971, the year Bangladesh became independent and the two women were at home raising their children, and have continued since. It was political instability, wholly male-generated, that led to the assassinations that brought Zia and Hasina to prominence.
But their rivalry has done nothing to improve things. Bangladesh is deeply corrupt and, in many parts, barely governed, raising concerns about instability in this strategic Muslim country already contending with Islamic militancy. Now, with an election set for Jan. 22, tempers are rising again.
Zia was elected in 1991, Hasina in 1996, and Zia again in 2001.
Zia's latest term ended in October, and the race between her Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Hasina's Awami League had already been bloody, with dozens killed in street clashes, before Hasina announced Wednesday that the 17-party alliance she leads would boycott the election. She alleged bias by the interim government.
Bangladesh is roughly the size of New York state with four times the population -- 147 million at last count -- and grindingly poor. Yet nationwide strikes repeatedly bring it to a standstill, shutting factories that churn out J. Crew sweaters and Banana Republic shirts and earn more than 75 percent of the country's hard currency.
"Foreigners think we are a moderate Muslim country because we have two women in charge," said Obaidul Kader, a 42-year-old businessman.
"But that's only thinking in religious terms," he said. "Maybe our ladies are not Islamic extremists, but they are not moderate people. Their hate is not moderate."
