The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has proposed making former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia its leader for life, stamping down hard on party members who had urged leadership change through democratic process.
"Madam Khaleda Zia will be our party's leader for the rest of her life," former BNP minister Tanveer Ahmed Siddiky told a meeting of BNP policy planners on Saturday.
"There will henceforth be no party decision or activity without (approval of) Khaleda Zia," he told the gathering of senior party officials, including some who had favoured removing Khaleda from the top post she has held since the mid-1970s. The dissidents had sought to have new leaders elected at party conventions held every one or two years, and to make sure that no leader held the same position for more than two terms.
Political analysts said the proposal to give Khaleda "life leadership" was an undemocratic move that would only "institutionalise dictatorship" in the BNP, one of Bangladesh's biggest parties. It ruled the country for two five-year terms since the 1990s, and is a frontrunner in a general election due in December. BNP secretary-general Khandaker Delwar Hossain told the media late on Saturday that "life-long leadership does not necessarily mean life-long chairperson of the party".
But analysts said that if Khaleda, who enjoys overwhelming authority over the party's rank and file, wished to become life-long leader, probably no one could stop her.
Khaleda only emerged from jail on Thursday, freed on bail after spending the past year behind bars on corruption charges. The army-backed interim government had arrested her in September 2007 but emergency courts have yet to prove any of the charges.
The authorities also detained more than 170 other key political figures last year for alleged corruption, among them Khaleda's bitter political rival, former prime minister Sheikh Hasina. She was paroled in June to go abroad for medical treatment.
Over the past two months, the government freed on bail more than 50 other detained leaders in a bid to persuade the BNP and Hasina's Awami League to take part in the December election. Among them were Khaleda's son and political heir, Tareque Rahman, and dozens of former ministers.
Analysts and officials say no national election would be credible or acceptable without the BNP and Awami League. Awami leaders said Hasina was likely to return from the United States in early October, and announce her decision on a government proposal that she sit down with Khaleda to discuss ways to make the coming poll free, fair and peaceful.
That meeting remained in doubt, though, as Awami leaders kept up a barrage of accusations and insults against Khaleda, analysts said. Khaleda and Hasina alternated as prime minister over 15 years up to 2006, most of the time barely speaking to each other. The formidable pair, both heirs to political dynasties, came to be known as the "Battling Begums", a reference to their honorifics as Muslim women of rank.
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