Dhaka ladies following up on Benazir

JYOTI MALHOTRA

New Delhi, March 29, 2007 : Much like the ousted leaders of Pakistan a decade ago, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, the old order in Bangladesh seems to be irrevocably making way for the new.

In the wake of Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina’s departure for the US a fortnight ago, it is being strongly rumoured that the other iron lady of Bangladesh politics, BNP leader Khaleda Zia, is finalizing a deal with the government of Saudi Arabia for a roof over her head.

Hasina, who left Dhaka on March 15, ostensibly to meet her son and ailing daughter-in-law, rubbished comments that she was simply going to stay back in the US. But the rumours have stayed.

Khaleda’s excuse to go to Saudi Arabia, a favourite destination for ousted Islamic leaders, is simple. She just wants to go on `umrah’, along with her doting sons.

Problem is, the army-backed government of Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmad has so far refused to allow Khaleda to take the boys, Tarique and Arafat Rahman, with her.

Political sources in Bangladesh point out that there is no way the Fakhruddin Ahmad government can let Tarique Rahman leave Bangladesh and accompany his mother to Saudi Arabia.

Having been arrested by the Anti-Corruption Commission on charges of massive corruption and likely to face further cases of extortion, threats and money-laundering, the government would suffer severe loss of credibility if it allows Tarique to leave.

Khaleda Zia, it is said, wants to do a Nawaz Sharif. That is, hope the Saudi monarchy will do for her what it did for Nawaz after Musharraf’s coup in 1999. For many years the former Pakistani PM lived luxuriously in Jeddah (he is currently in Dubai) in exchange for vowing not to return to political life in Pakistan.

Benazir Bhutto, too, finds it easier to shuttle between Dubai and London – and even occasionally, New Delhi – simply because she knows she will be arrested the minute she lands at a Pakistani airport.

With Bangladeshi politics in such turmoil, New Delhi and other key players in the region, including the US and Britain, believe the Bangladeshi army is actively backing a transition from the two grand old women who have consumed and divided the domestic polity for the last three decades, in favour of a robust politics that is not dynastic in character.

Significantly, New Delhi’s recently adopted realism, at least vis-à-vis Bangladesh, means the UPA government has decided to stop playing favourites in Bangladesh.

Which means that India’s decades-old support for the Awami League, as old as Mujib-ur Rahman and the war for independence in 1971, and against the allegedly ``pro-Pakistani’’ bent of the BNP, is in the process of changing.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently wrote a letter to Sheikh Hasina, and although the contents of the letter are not known, New Delhi is currently so pleased with the army-backed government in Dhaka that Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee wants to do a bilateral session with his counterpart, Iftekhar Choudhury on March 31 in the runup to the SAARC summit.

Meanwhile, power could well devolve to senior BNP leaders such as Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, who was openly critical of Tarique Rahman’s lavish lifestyle and his utterly corrupt ways and is believed to have warned his mother of the political danger of associating with such a son.

The Awami League’s second leadership rung is also alive and feisty, Bangladeshi analysts say, and would have no problem inheriting and sharing power in the wake Sheikh Hasina’s exit.

ENDS