After 36 years of existence, the sacrifices made by hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis for the freedom of their country have gone in vain. The people of Bangladesh fought a bloody war against the Pakistan Army in the name of freedom, equality, justice, humanity and a society free of exploitation. But Bangladesh has not attained the dream for which so many laid down their lives in 1971. As the current interim administration in Dhaka digs itself further into unconstitutional muck, this realisation becomes starker by the day.
Against January's backdrop of political violence and increasing frustration, the imposition of emergency was initially welcomed. Optimism as stoked by a series of praiseworthy actions by the newly appointed government, particularly the crackdown on corruption in Bangladesh's political and business circles. But alas! Though it promised much at first, the interim government has essentially followed in the footsteps of past governments, particularly in its casual dismissal of constitutional provisions on governance.
The first problem is the current administration's understanding of the term interim. The institution of the non-party caretaker government, vested with the specific responsibility of overseeing the impartial handover of power from one administration to the next, entered Bangladesh's Constitution in 1996. Article 126 of the Constitution mandates that the government must hold elections within 90 days of the dissolution of the previous Parliament. Article 58 B(1) says that the interim government must relinquish its power as soon as the new Parliament is constituted and a prime minister elected. All previous caretaker governments since 1991 conducted elections within the stipulated 90-day window. This is the first time that such an administration has failed to do so, and is instead working to maintain its own position. But by the end of July, it had been in power for almost exactly 200 days.
The caretaker administration's three-month window expired on 12 April. On that day, Chief Advisor Fakhruddin Ahmed declared that elections could not be held before the country's endemic political corruption was tackled; he included only the vaguest mention of this being a possibility by the end of 2008. In mid-July, this push-back date was finally confirmed by newly appointed Chief Election Commissioner Shamsul Huda.