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Fly-happy Hasina sets out while party grapples with fued

REAZ AHMAD
Awami League (AL) chief Sheikh Hasina leaves for Toronto this morning, kicking off her seventh Euro-American trip since her party's poll debacle 22 months ago.
She takes a British Airways flight to Toronto, Canada where she will attend an academic programme of her daughter Saima Wazed Putul. Putul joins her from Miami in the United States.
The visit leaves her party, grappling with infighting at different levels, in the lurch.
The current tour, taking place less than three weeks after her
return from Italy, will also take her to her son, daughter and grandchildren in the US. She is likely to return home on August 22 via London.
She will miss the observation of August 15, the day her party mourns the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman along with much of his family, as National Mourning Day.
She will also miss the election challenge in Netrakona that her party takes up since the October ballot in 2001.
The parliamentary by-elections to Netrakona-3 on August 21 puts seven aspirants, including one from
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the AL, in the fray. It will be the first test of ballot for the party that boycotted 11 parliamentary by-polls since the last general elections.
The Netrakona seat fell vacant in the death of ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) lawmaker Nurul Amin Talukdar.
The AL will also enforce a countrywide hartal on August 16 in her absence demanding implementation of the verdict on the Bangabandhu Murder Case.
The party chief has already given Motia Chowdhury the responsibilities of overseeing party efforts to regain the Netrokona-3 seat that the party lost in 1996.
Sheikh Hasina's visit to Italy from July 17 and 20 was preceded by a month-long three-nation tour to France, the US and UK.
During that trip, she attended the Socialist Party congress in France, spent time with her son and daughter in Miami and sister Sheikh Rehana in the UK. She also attended the council of UK unit of the Jubo League. She attended the funeral of US unit president of the AL Dr Enayetur Rahim, who died while Hasina was there.
She visited the US and UK between December 8, 2001 and
January 12, 2002, April 24 and May 23, July 16 and August 10, and October 22 and November 2 in 2002.
Most of the tours were private when she attended the marriage of
son Joy, the academic programme of a nephew, Bobby, and oversaw progress of work on a memoir of her father.
Her bitter political foes at home alleged that she was spearheading an anti-Bangladesh campaign abroad.
The opposition leader, however, dismissed the charges, saying she was trying to inform the world of the persecution the ruling alliance in Bangladesh was carrying out on the opposition.
The current tour of the AL chief leaves her party behind to be dogged by factional fights.
Two presidium members of the party, both from Sylhet division, exchanged salvos, a congress of the party's youth front, the Jubo League, ended up in a fierce gunfighting in Sylhet and the councils and meetings of the AL and its front organisations were vandalised in Feni, Brahmanbaria, Comilla and Gopalganj.
The AL is also carrying out a probe against its godfather-famed Feni leader Joinal Hazari, but the newly formed Chhatra League committee in the district vowed to reinstate him again.
The AL is failing to put its house in order at a time when the party's district information and research secretaries at a joint meeting last week said infighting in the party units across Bangladesh were the real culprit for the party's debacle in the last general elections.