Word: zia
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...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 and Zia were arrested and imprisoned, charged on various counts of graft and abuse of power. Some of their closest political allies were also convicted of corruption as the caretaker government vowed to shake things up in Dhaka...
...gone the reformers' way. The two begums, as Hasina and Zia are known, still command huge swathes of support - and, after ceaseless political pressure from their cadres, both are now free from detention and contesting the upcoming polls. Initially, the caretaker government attempted to encourage prominent figures from civil society to form a "third way" to break from the country's two-party system. That project failed, as did efforts to weaken the begums' networks of patronage that assured their grip on power. After two years out in the cold, Hasina or Zia could very well snatch the reins again...
...want to see the kind of polarization, the dysfunctional government that they witnessed in the past," says Peter Manikas, director of Asia research for the National Democratic Institute, a Washington-based think tank that has sent a delegation to monitor the elections. Since the 1990s, Hasina and Zia have swapped rancorous terms in office, leaving legacies of divisiveness and a trail of scandals of alleged kickbacks and bribery. "There was a winner-take-all mentality," says Manikas...
...Right from Day 1, we have been saying that the anticorruption cases will be tried under normal laws of the land and everyone will be allowed due process under the law. [Zia and Hasina] have been released on bail by the courts. One of the reforms we did was making the courts totally independent from the executive branch. Basically the process will continue under the next government...
...Will Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina be allowed to stand for the elections...