Word: awami
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...result this month: a return to the way 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...
...caretaker government was installed by the military in January, 2007, after the last round of pre-election violence between Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and opposition leader Sheikh Hasina's Awami League. That election was suspended, and Ahmed, a former central banker with a reputation for clean hands, was appointed to run the country with wide-ranging emergency powers. Despite his ambiguous title of "chief adviser" to the government, Ahmed has effectively been Prime Minister...
...population - a combined 80% by most estimates - and the length of the two begums' detention has drawn the ire of millions. As elsewhere in impoverished South Asia, populist dynasties hold strong. "Hasina had her shortcomings, but she is a legendary figure," says Abdur Razzaq, a prominent member of the Awami League. "Charisma is very important; it really means something...
...known there, is gone. Ever since achieving independence from Pakistan in 1971, impoverished, unfortunate Bangladesh has slumped down its path toward democracy. When not under the rule of autocratic generals - as it was twice in the past - it has been the province of two mammoth, bickering political parties, the Awami League (AL) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Their legacy of craven politicking and brazen plundering buoyed the current army-backed regime into power. But few believe Moeen is truly democracy's savior when the military has so consistently impeded its growth in the past. "As Bangladeshis, it's like...
...political parties have seized upon the government's diminishing credibility. "We're in grave economic peril," says Hussain of the BNP. "It's time for democratic unity." His party and the Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party that has existed for decades in direct antagonism to the secular-left Awami League, took the unprecedented step of calling for even Hasina's release from prison. They bridle at the caretaker government's undemocratic attempts to reform democracy from the top down. "Just see the U.S.," says Jamaat's Ali Ahsan Mojaheed. "It took hundreds of years to establish fair democratic norms...