Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said on Wednesday she was willing to share power with the disgruntled opposition after winning a massive majority in Bangladesh's parliamentary election this week. A senior opposition party leader did not rule out co-operation but said it would wait to see if the winning camp was sincere and refrained from the sort of harsh treatment of opposition supporters seen in the past.
Hasina said she was ready to offer senior parliamentary posts to bitter political rival Begum Khaleda Zia and her party, although Khaleda earlier rejected the results of an election that returned Bangladesh to democracy after two years' emergency rule.
Independent monitors said the ballot was fair, but Khaleda, also a former prime minister, has alleged widespread fraud. That has raised fears of street protests by her supporters. The outgoing army-backed interim government suspended many political rights after cancelling an election in January 2007 amidst widespread street actions and political violence.
Speaking at her first post-election news conference, a smiling and confident-sounding Hasina urged Khaleda to accept the results, adding she wanted her government to work with all sides to establish a new political culture in Bangladesh. "As winners, we have to deal with everything with a sense of forgiveness and accommodation instead of vengeance, to take the country forward," said the bespectacled Hasina, 61, who wore a green- and gold-bordered saree and arrived 50 minutes late.
"(Khaleda) should accept the people's verdict. I am ready to work with everyone," Hasina said. She said she was prepared to offer opposition members parliamentary and ministerial posts if they were willing to cooperate with the government. Hasina's Awami League and its allies won more than two-thirds of parliament's 300 seats in Bangladesh's first election in seven years on Monday. The coalition led by Khaleda's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) took just 31. Despite the lopsided margin, one monitoring group after another has said the poll appeared largely fair. One of the latest such endorsements came from the European Union Observation Mission.
Its chief observer, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, also told reporters on Wednesday the BNP "complained about irregularities in 224 polling stations while there are 45,000 (total) so the number of complaints are very insignificant".
Khaleda did not responded immediately to Hasina's offer, but a senior leader of her BNP said co-operation may be possible. Bangladesh election winners or their supporters have frequently mistreated their opposite numbers in ways ranging from beatings to bringing dubious legal charges against them. Khaleda has given little indication of what action, if any, she might take, over her charges that Monday's vote was rigged.
In the past, losing parties have often resorted to strikes and street protests that can turn violent - and provide a rationale for intervention in government by the military. Hasina and Khaleda alternated in power during the 15 years up to 2006 in Bangladesh's personality-dominated politics. But many problems went unresolved, in part due to the mass street agitation by their parties when out of office.
Comments
Comments are closed.