BANGLADESH IN 2000 Searching for Better Governance?

Abstract

In the year 2000, Bangladesh was mired in lawlessness, intractable governance, executive-judiciary acrimony, enfeebled diplomacy, and economic stagnation. However, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina remained firmly saddled in power. She showed little sign of yielding to the opposition pressure to hold a fresh election under the caretaker government, ignored the fusillades of allegations against her government, and endured as a feisty leader of the ruling Awami League (AL), confident of winning the next election. The standoff between the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the AL changed little and their rhetoric continued to divide the nation. The meandering hope of the year was the modified opposition strategy to lower the old-style prolonged hartals (general strikes), and roiling and indefinite work stoppages. However, the BNP and its partners in the opposition alliance did not lift their boycott of the Sangshad, the national parliament, except for stints to retain their lawmakers’ status. The BNP-led alliance also kept the hartal option for the future, a political weapon without which the opposition is not taken seriously in Bangladesh.