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News ANALYSIS

No change in politics

Hasina, Khaleda only swapped positions

Shakhawat Liton
Bangladeshi politics is following the same path that it crossed in the mid nineties. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Leader of the Opposition Khaleda Zia swapped their positions on the caretaker government issue. Sheikh Hasina wanted it and Khaleda vehemently opposed it. Now both leaders have swapped once again their views on having a “small interim cabinet” to conduct the next election. Back in October 1994, the country7 was reeling under the same political uncertainty that it is facing now. As the then opposition chief, Hasina was heating up the streets demanding the introduction of a neutral caretaker government system to hold a 'free and fair' election, while then prime minister Khaldea outright rejected it, saying except for a lunatic or a child, nobody was neutral.
To end that stalemate, a special envoy from the-then Commonwealth secretary general Sir Ninian Stephen came to Dhaka proposing a formula to the ever-feuding two main political parties.
According to Ninian's formula, an 11-member cabinet would be formed with the incumbent prime minister in the chair. Five cabinet members would be from the ruling party and five others from the opposition. The interim cabinet would give all-out support to the Election Commission for holding free and fair parliamentary’ polls.
The then Prime Minister Khaleda Zia had agreed to the formula. But Sheikh Hasina rejected the idea, saying it would be a multiparty government, but they wanted a non-partisan government.
Therefore, the efforts of Sir Ninian along with those of some eminent citizens and diplomats failed to break the deadlock. And 147 opposition lawmakers resigned from parliament on December 28, 1994, to gear up for an antigovernment movement.
Fhe result was the farcical election of February 15, 1996, to constitute the sixth parliament that introduced the caretaker government system in haste by amending the constitution. The caretaker government assumed office at the end of March. And the seventh parliamentary election was held on June 12,1996.
Now, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has come up with a proposal which is identical to the Ninian formula.
In an interview with the BBC's Bangla Service on Monday, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina suggested forming a "small cabinet" that would include opposition MPs ahead of the next parliamentary polls.
She, however, did not
mention the size of the "small cabinet" and how many members would come from the opposition parties to it and what the functions of the cabinet would be. One thing is clear, though: Sheikh Hasina herself will be prime minister in such an interim cabinet.
Again, Khaleda Zia has rejected Hasina's proposal on grounds similar to those Hasina cited back in 1994.
" The ground on which the then AL rejected the Ninian formula is the same on which we are rejecting the prime minister's proposal," quipped Moudud Ahmed, a member of BNP's national standing committee Monday.
In the manner of the AL of the nineties, BNP chief Khaleda Zia Monday reiterated that the next general election must be held under a non-party government.
Given the situation, the possibility of any consensus between the ruling party and the opposition following the premier's proposal has already fizzled out. Whether the next episode wall be a repetition of an old farcical election now looms large as a big question.