Former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wajid has been served notice by the military-backed caretaker government not to return home. Apparently to keep her out, first a murder case was registered against her but, when she insisted on returning home to face the "false and fake cases" the government ordered her banishment. She is scheduled to come home on April 23, and she says she would come what may.
The caretaker government has warned her consequent to her coming back the "law and order might deteriorate, prevailing stability disturbed and public safety and economic life jeopardised".
The day before, the caretakers had told her archrival, Begum Khaleda Zia, to pack her bags for a journey to Saudi Arabia. As things stand, she might fly out to the holy land on April 22, in the company of some close blood relations, initially on a one-month visa. She was initially reluctant to leave but later made a deal with the government to go into exile in return for the release of her two sons held on charges of corruption.
She is also reportedly frustrated over the lack of support from the top officials of her own political party. Thanks to dynastic politics that has struck deep roots in South Asia, when democracy was restored in Bangladesh in 1991 these two Begums were catapulted unto the top slots of the two major political parties.
While Khaleda Zia inherited her late husband Ziaur Rehman's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Sheikh Hasina Wajid became chief of the Awami League, the party of Bangladesh's founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. For the next fifteen years they alternated as prime minister, until October last year at the conclusion of Khaleda Zia's five-year term.
As Bangladesh prepared for the new elections, tensions mounted between the supporters of the two Begums, often resulting in bloody clashes on the streets of Dhaka. In one such clash on October 28 last year, four activists of Jamaat-i-Islami, a close partner of Begum Khaleda Zia's BNP, were killed. In a case recently filed, Hasina Wajid has been charged with abetting these killings.
On the face of it, the interim set-up, headed by former central bank chief Fakharuddin Ahmed, seems to have responded to the unending quarrels between the two former prime ministers by pressuring them to go into exile and thus calm the country for the elections. Corruption cases filed against some 160 politicians including two sons of Begum Khaleda Zia were likely to be used as tools by the caretaker government to exert pressure.
Seen through a Pakistani perspective the forced banishment of the former prime ministers by the Bangladesh military rulers smacks of a déjà vu. Bangladesh is in perhaps, for a rather lengthier caretaker rule. Already there is some talk of next elections not being held before the end of 2008. Not only that such a move would seriously undermine the growth of democracy in that country, letting the allegedly corrupt leaders off the hook by sending them into exile or making deals with them would negate the basic principles of justice.
Dhaka should re-think this bargain and consider judicial proceedings the violators of the country's laws. Not doing that would amount to insulting the nation's collective conscience, in that you catch and punish the weak but bargain with the big and mighty. That would create the unmistakable impression that the Bangladesh caretaker rulers have some other agenda of their own.