Word: bangladesh
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...Bangladesh voters will cast their ballots in the nation's first general election in seven years. The polls have been a focal point of the country's politics ever since a military intervention in January 2007, which postponed scheduled elections in order to end escalating violence between followers of two rival political parties. In the interim, a caretaker regime of technocrats has set about trying to tackle Bangladesh's wretched record of corruption and reform its volatile electoral politics. Results have been mixed, but the government now looks ready to deliver on its promises for free and credible polls...
...things were before. The aborted election two years ago saw some 12 million fake names on the voter roll, which, among other allegations of fraud, led to disputes and running street battles between the country's two main political parties, the Awami League (AL) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The interim government rode into power on a tidal wave of popular anger and exasperation with the AL and the BNP and their demagogic, warring leaders, Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, who ran these behemoth parties as their personal fiefs. Both Hasina and Zia were arrested and imprisoned, charged...
...degree of apprehension. During emergency rule, dissidents were arrested, journalists muzzled and political assembly was banned. A wing of the military intelligence was accused by prominent human rights groups of torturing activists. Moeen himself made troubling statements about the efficacy of democratic rule in a country as turbulent as Bangladesh. But as he has quieted down in recent months, fears that the caretaker government was a dictatorship in civilian clothing have subsided. "The best thing that [the army] has done," says Ali Riaz, chair of the department of politics and government at Illinois State University, "is reduce its visibility...
...need for a functional, democratic government could not be more urgent. Bangladesh remains one of the poorest countries in the world, with 40% of its population living on less than $1 a day, and its government must act effectively to deal with inflation and soaring food costs that are making life miserable for the rural poor and urban working classes. Now, experts warn, is not the time to be settling personal vendettas or consolidating power. "Bangladeshis, including me, hope that the [two begums] think with a larger vision, and strengthen institutions," says Riaz. "Then both should have a graceful exit...
...everyone in India is comforted by simply hounding culprits over the border in Pakistan. Some worry about a deeper and closer conspiracy. Media reports on Thursday had the attackers carrying at least three SIM cards purchased on the Indian side of the border with Bangladesh, pointing to some local collusion, a possibility the police had tried to rule out when they first publicized Kasab's testimony. Lapses in policing since the attacks have infuriated the public. Newspapers ran stories this past week about how even after the attacks, truckers transporting contraband into the city were allegedly able to bribe cops...