Former Bangladeshi prime ministers Sheikh Hasina and Begum Khaleda Zia will face no legal obstacle to contesting December's parliamentary election, a key minister in the military-backed interim government said on Monday. "There is no legal constraint in their way to contest the election," Hossain Zillur Rahman told reporters, removing doubts that they might be barred from the polls because of several corruption charges still pending against them.
Shortly after Zillur spoke, Khaleda confirmed she would participate in the coming polls. "There should be no doubt about my participation," she told reporters at her party office. "There is no bar ... and I will register myself as a voter soon," she said. The courts released Hasina and Khaleda on parole or bail earlier this year after both had spent more than 12 months behind bars over allegations of graft and abuse of power.
Though few charges are still pending, the courts have stayed proceedings in some other cases until after the December 18 vote. So far neither woman has been convicted on any charge. Hasina, chief of the Awami League, and Khaleda, head of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), have denied all charges against them, calling them false and aimed at destroying their political careers.
Zillur's confirmation that the two bitter rivals, who have dominated the political scene for almost two decades, were free to contest the election came a day after the interim government vowed to provide the two women with top security protection over the electoral period. It said Hasina and Khaleda would be guarded by officers of the Special Security Force (SSF) for three months from the day the Election Commission announced a timetable for the December polls. The commission is likely to do this on November 2.
The Awami League and the BNP had been demanding freedom for their leaders to contest the election, and the lifting of a state of emergency imposed when the interim authority took charge in January 2007, as preconditions to participate in the polls. Officials and analysts say that, without the country's two main parties, the vote would be neither fair nor credible.
The government said on Monday it would relax the emergency after the poll timetable was announced, and would gradually ease restrictions further to ensure unhindered campaigning by the parties and their candidates. "We will have it relaxed to the maximum level," said the government's foreign affairs adviser (minister), Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, after meeting visiting Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma.
"I have also reiterated in my discussions the Commonwealth's position that a state of emergency is inconsistent with a normal electoral process," Sharma later told a news conference. "It is important that the interim government and the Election Commission together ensure that the elections take place in a climate of peace and security," he added. The government had said earlier it wanted to retain the emergency curbs to ensure voter safety and a peaceful restoration of democracy.