Bangladesh to hold Jan polls amid boycott threat

Bangladesh announced plans on Monday for a general election in early January but they were rejected by the main opposition party, which called for the polls date to be suspended and declared fresh protests from Tuesday.

In an announcement on state television, Chief Elections Commissioner Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad urged all parties to take part in the contest for the 300-seat parliament and said that the army would be deployed across the volatile nation to prevent clashes between political rivals.

"The election will be held on January 5," Ahmad said in his widely-anticipated address.

An alliance of 18 opposition parties immediately rejected the plans and called a 48-hour nationwide blockade of roads, railways and waterways from Tuesday morning in protest to force Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to quit and make way for a caretaker government to oversee the election.

"We reject the election schedule. We ask the election commission to suspend the date until a political consensus on election-time government is reached. We won't take part in any farce in the name of elections." opposition spokesman Fakhrul Islam Alamgir told reporters.

Commissioner Ahmad said he had asked President Abdul Hamid -- whose post is largely ceremonial -- to negotiate an end to the dispute between Hasina's Awami League and the opposition which is dominated by former premier Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

"We've asked the president to personally initiate special steps and end this unbearable impasse," Ahmad said.

"I've asked all political parties to uphold the will of the people, maintain peace and compromise."

Hasina has rejected the calls for a caretaker government, and instead formed a multi-party interim cabinet last week which is largely made of her allies.

She asked the BNP to join the cabinet but her invitation was bluntly refused by the opposition.

While previous elections have been organised by non-party caretaker governments, Hasina scrapped the arrangement in 2011.

She argued that the system had previously paved the way for the army to seize power in a country which has witnessed at least 19 coups since 1975.

Weeks of protestsThe announcement of an election date is expected to add to the tensions in the violence-plagued country, after weeks of deadly protests by the BNP and its Islamists left at least 30 people dead and hundreds injured.

Security has been tightened with the deployment of paramilitary border guards in major cities, private television station Somoy said.

A police spokesman told AFP that a senior BNP leader was arrested on Monday night.

This year Bangladesh has been reeling from the worst political violence since its independence after a controversial war crimes court handed down death sentences to the leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest Islamic party which is banned from fielding candidates on January 5.

At least 150 people have died in the clashes, pitting tens of thousands of Jamaat supporters against police, paramilitaries and ruling party activists.

US Ambassador Dan Mozena met Bangladesh's new Foreign Minister Mahmood Ali Monday, stressing the need for dialogue between the two major parties.

"The process of the election schedule makes the dialogue more urgent between the two political camps," he said, adding the talks were crucial for a free and fair elections that would be "credible in the eyes of Bangladeshi people".

Bangladesh has been plagued by political violence ever since it won independence from Pakistan in 1971 after a bloody war of secession.

Deadly clashes and a boycott threat by the Awami League led to the cancellation of elections in January 2007 and a subsequent coup.

An army-backed civilian government remained in power for two years until it called the elections nearly two years later in December 2008 which were overwhelmingly won by the Awami League.

 

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