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A group of people claiming to be part of the newly elected ruling political party attacked a home in the village of Khasitola in Sylhet District. They destroyed furniture and belongings of the residents and injured the inmates Asma Begum and her daughter Ashik Jonaki. In the post Parliamentary election period there have been several incidents of harassment and attacking opponent’s homes. So far 8 people have been killed in the post election violence.

Sylhet, Bangladesh. January 05 2009
by: A H Arif, DRIK News

Okay, so we’ve got our freedom back, democracy restored, a brilliant election, shocking result, and positive attitude among general people. Not bad for some delicious starters, 2009!

Now let’s see, the most talked issue since the beginning of year which is only 6-days old? Who’s going to be in the cabinet and show us the path to reach Vision 2021 which itself sounds quite Western but hey, this attracts young generation so why not?

We’ve got 31 “Ministers” taking oath today. We don’t know who’s getting what. But more importantly what on earth? It appears, people like myself, who are getting fond of this Vision 2021 and a Digital Bangladesh concept, look dumbfounded now. If you say our generation leaders, I’d consider Taposh though he’s a Sheikh, Saber, Inu, Menon, and even a strong personality like Anisul Islam Mahmud. I want to put more names but keeping it short for now.

Alright, Dipu Moni’s there and couple of other who we could consider “young” but I can’t believe that so many good leaders are left out from the cabinet. Is our PM going to give us a second round of surprise by displaying the leaders we think could represent us?

I wouldn’t mind saying how disappointed I am. I mean I was all hyped like many others to figure out who’s going to get what. But now I feel like deflated balloon. So many hide-and-seek, funny comments and speculation, we ended up with considerably respectfully “senior” team.

Agree that many of them are first-timers and I am pleased to see A M A Muhit, Barrister Shafique, G M Quader, Syed Ashraful and few others and of course Matia Choudhury there. But just because you’ve got so many new faces, it doesn’t make them a “fresh looking young” cabinet that we were fervently hoping to see. And because I’ve got no clue about some of them, I can’t gauge at all how they will work. Known younger people can reach easily to people and their colleagues (and by that mean people working in Secretariats and other related govt and non-govt offices plus diplomats).

To be honest, this can’t be a surprise if you leave out most of the names from speculations just to make it look like a surprise. Yeah I’m surprised, but that’s because I wasn’t expecting to be disappointed.

I still want to trust this Government and hope the “younger” people could be brought in to reach the vision. There’s still time and I hope the chances are not lost.

-

Setsuna F Seiei is the pseudonym of a cyber activist, who writes from Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Photo: Shafiqul Islam Kajol, DRIK News

A 31 member strong team of Ministers has taken oath at Bangabhaban. There are 23 full ministers and 8 state ministers. President Iajuddin Ahmed administered the oath ceremony which began at 6:45pm.

The Daily Star has published the list of the Ministers:

The ministers are Abul Maal Abdul Muhit, Motia Chowdhury, Air Vice-marshal (retd) AK Khandker, Abdul Latif Siddiqui, Barrister Shafique Ahmed, Advocate Shahara Khatun, Syed Ashraful Islam,Rezaul Karim Hira, Engineer Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, Abul Kalam Azad, Dr Dipu Moni, Dr Afsarul Amin, Dr Abdur Razzak, Syed Abul Hossain, Col (retd) Farooq Khan, GM Quader, Romesh Chandra Sen, Dilip Barua, Raziuddin Raju, Enamul Haque Mostafa Shahid, Nurul Islam Nahid, Abdul Latif Biswas and AFM Ruhul Haque.

The state ministers who took oath this evening are Mostafizur Rahman, ABM Tajul Islam, Tanjim Ahmed Sohel Taj, Dr Hasan Mahmood, Begum Munnujan Sufian, Dipankar Talukder, Ahad Ali Sarkar and Yafes Osman.

• AL, allies take oath on Saturday
• Battle for presidency heats up
• 2 BCL men arrested at DU hall over factional fight
• BNP will help as opposition if govt wants: Delwar
• BNP concedes defeat

The Daily Star:

• Impartial anti-graft drive to continue: Hasina tells visiting UN team
• Sheikh Hasina’s acid test: The first cabinet will give the clearest sign of her promised change
• BCL captures DU rooms ignoring Hasina’s directive
• BNP divided over what to do now
• AL, JP to form govt as per condition of alliance: Says Ershad

The New Age:

• Hasina vows to make JS effective
  
• AL wants Zillur as president: Jalil

The Independent:

• Offering me president’s post is demand of people, says Ershad
• Trial of war criminals: If Dhaka makes request UN will cooperate

The New Nation:

• They will lose seats if charges prove true: No legal bar for accused from taking oath
• Democracy not out of the woods

The Bangladesh Today:

• One mandate, two choices – Taufiqur Rahman

Oped News:

• Would Women Prevent Bangladesh’s Descent to Islamism?

Gulf News:

• New Bangladesh government seeks stronger ties with Gulf

Samay Live:

• Hasina expected to take over as Bangla PM

Op-eds:

• Priorities for the next government – Md. Asadullah Khan

“The thing I found most interesting was that there were definitely more women voters than men voters. I spoke to one voter called Rahima who was carrying a tiny baby. She told me that she was suffering from a leg injury and she had a small child but she was still adamant about voting. I asked her why voting was so important to her. She told me that she had very few rights in her life so when she was given an opportunity to exercise her right, she was not going to waste it.”

-Tulip Siddiq

• Parliament to decide CG legitimacy: Hasina
• Hasina to attack poverty, offers opponents key role
• Vote reflects people’s will: EU observers
• Foreign observers rate elections fair, credible: NDI
• BNP workers are under attack, alleges Rizvi

The Daily Star:

• Strategically Speaking: Time for introspection, not rejection
• Accept polls results to strengthen democracy Foreign observers urge BNP, other parties
• Observers find no irregularities: Say polls were held in a fair, transparent manner
• Send in rigging info – BNP asks grassroots; oath decision after checking those
• Target food prices
• AL 25pc up, BNP 20pc down
• Win over abuse of religion: Civil society observes about Jamaat downfall; the party tightlipped
• Highest turnout Fake votes near zero

The New Age:

• No politics of vengeance, says Hasina
• 87.16pc turnout in 9th JS polls
  

The Independent:

• BNP-Jamaat heavyweights roll in dramatic poll outcome
• A victory against corruption, says Ershad

The New Nation:

• Possibility of deferring UZ poll ruled out
• 3,69,539 voters cast No-vote

The Bangladesh Today:

• Hasina vows to honour people’s verdict

Indian Express:

• Morning in the East

AFP:

• Bangladesh poll winner urges rival to accept defeat

Reuters:

• Battered Bangladesh sees some hope in vote results

LA Times

• Bangladesh stability is fragile as former prime minister wins election

Himal South Asian:

• After the Emergency: Bangladesh Votes

NDTV.com:

• Hasina signals tough stand against terror

UPI Asia:

• Bangladesh election: Winners and losers

Op-eds:

• A verdict against graft, war crimes, militancy – Biswadip Das
• The Dream Result: Can AL handle it? – MA Taslim
• Charter for Change now belongs to the nation – Dr. Mozammel H. Khan
• Inflation and politics: Issues not to be overlooked – Ahsan H. Mansur

“We don’t have any evidence of election engineering. I believe that other national and international observers also did not find such evidence. Our hope is that winner and losers will work together for the country.” – Head of the Commonwealth election observer group Cassam Uteem

Dhaka, Bangladesh. December 31 2008
Photo- Munira Morshed Munni, DRIK News

Photo: Munem Wasif, DRIK News.

A Muslim majority country of over 150 million people just held a high-turnout peaceful democratic election. The secular Awami League won a landslide victory in Bangladesh’s parliamentary elections and is poised to send back to power Sheikh Hasina – one of two women who have led Bangladesh in the past – as the country’s Prime Minister. In the process, the Bangladeshi voters sent the Islamist political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, into political oblivion. The Jamaat secured 2 seats in the 300 seat parliament while the Awami League secured 230 seats. This election was a stunning repudiation of military rule and of the Islamists in a country that has suffered from both. However, as democracy triumphed in Bangladesh, the world barely took notice.

It has been a long and painful road back to democracy for Bangladesh. Nearly two years ago, on January 11, 2007, the Bangladesh army seized power in a military coup, ostensibly to save the country from political violence ahead of impending parliamentary elections. The army seized power with the tacit support of Washington and London, and was cheered on by elements of Bangladesh’s civil society. The army postponed elections, declared emergency rule, suspended fundamental rights, and launched an “anti-corruption” drive to apparently root out political corruption (a favorite excuse of all military juntas). In sweeping raids the army arrested major political leaders, including Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia (the leaders of the two largest political parties in Bangladesh), and charged them with corruption. As the two major political parties faced army pressure, the Islamists were ascendant. The army also tried to engineer a political party of its own. In the process, nearly half a million citizens were arrested and many were tortured. Journalists were intimidated, beaten and tortured into submission.

While 150 million Bangladeshis were living under the gun, the United States State Department looked the other way – even refusing to acknowledge that a coup had taken place in Bangladesh.

It all looked to be going swimmingly for the military. They had devised a “Minus-Two” plan. The aim was to exile the two leaders of the major political parties and engineer Bangladeshi democracy with a prominent and permanent political role for the military (a la Pakistan). The plan ran into problems when the two leaders refused to go into exile and the political parties, especially the Awami League, refused to buckle. So, the army jailed the two leaders on corruption charges. The army also soon heard from the Bangladeshi people. As Bangladeshi students took to the streets, the army cracked down. But in its heavy handed response to the uprising, the army had shattered the illusion of benevolent rule of the gun. The army had turned on its own people. It was now only a matter of time before the army would be forced to exit. The only unknown was what shape the exit would take. The political parties now had the initiative and they used it to great effect.

From the beginning, the army had a window of two years to either consolidate its position or exit – a timetable that coincided with the end of the Bush administration. Right on schedule, the army is set to leave power in Dhaka just as the new administration takes power in Washington.

Now, as the army is about to leave power and hand democracy back to the people of Bangladesh, questions remain and the damage must be assessed.

The army has made a mockery of the rule of law in Bangladesh. The army set up kangaroo courts and forced politicians into jail – some on charges of massive corruption and others on absurdly trumped up charges. Yet, ahead of the elections, most of these corruption charges have mysteriously disappeared. The two leaders – Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia – were charged with massive corruption. They were considered so dangerous to Bangladesh by the army that they were held under special laws in the interest of national security. The United States cheered these arrests as the “rule of law”. An unaccountable regime was locking people up and running kangaroo courts while the most prominent democracy in the world applauded. It was a sad spectacle. Now, those charges are gone but the mockery of the rule of law remains.

The entrance of the army two years ago was enabled as much by Bangladeshi civil society as it was by the United States and the United Kingdom. The lure of reengineering the political system by force was too much for civil society to resist. The hard work of democracy – the need to make your case to the population and earn their vote – was not required. It was a short-cut to the fast lane of politics. Civil society sacrificed the fundamental rights of Bangladeshis in the “national interest”. It was argued in breathless op-eds in major newspapers in Bangladesh and in the halls of power in Washington that the smart kids could “clean up” Bangladeshi democracy – with the help of the gun. They rested on the fairy tale that unaccountable power at the barrel of a gun, and the suspension of fundamental rights, was a pathway to a functioning democracy. In this fairy tale, they neglected Bangladesh’s own history with military rule and the previous long struggle back to democracy. By enabling the military in its coup, civil society has legitimized military intervention in Bangladesh. This will be a difficult genie to put back in the bottle.

As Bangladesh now attempts to send the army back to the barracks, it must find a way to ensure the army stays there in the future. Bangladeshi democracy was nowhere near perfect – no democracy is. But, in spite of the corruption that existed in Bangladeshi politics, Bangladesh prospered economically and had managed three free and fair democratic elections and peaceful transitions of power over 15 years. Now, Bangladesh must restart that clock. The Bangladeshi Constitution, with its enumerated rights, is a strong foundation to build toward a lasting democracy. But, it cannot be done if military intervention is considered legitimate.

Bangladeshis are a resilient people. Democracy is Bangladesh’s original birth wish. After all, the country gained independence because its people expressed their will at the ballot box and then gave their lives to defend that vote. That is a legacy that every Bangladeshi must remember and honor.

Perhaps it is fitting, then, that the people have now voted overwhelmingly to send back to power the Awami League – the political party that led the independence movement for a secular Bangladesh. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that the Bangladeshi people have once again rejected military rule and the Islamists.

Today, Bangladesh’s future looks a little brighter. The Awami League comes to power with the hopes of 150 million people placed in its hands. There is much work to do, and much damage to undo. We watch, with hope.

-

Mashuqur Rahman [http://www.docstrangelove.com] is one of the highest read Bangladeshi-American bloggers. Critically acclaimed for his incisive analysis on Bangladesh, US foreign policy and dedicated advocacy of human rights.

[Read posts by Mashuqur Rahman]