And still popular, against the odds
HUNDREDS of thousands of people in south-western Bangladesh remain homeless after a cyclone which struck in late May, killing at least 200 people. Much of the disaster area is still under water. Some 4.8m people have been affected, and recovery will be long-drawn-out. Gabura, an island of 38,000 people surrounded by torrential tidal waters, lost 87 people dead or missing. Locals say no one can live there unless an embankment is repaired before the onset of the monsoon, due any day now. They accuse the local authorities of pocketing most of the money allocated for maintaining the embankment.
Oddly, the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, has not yet visited the disaster area. But then, since her party, the Awami League, swept to power in an election late last year, her government has found little time for governing. Rather, it has been preoccupied with constitutional issues, and the call for trials of those accused of war-crimes in the 1971 war of secession from Pakistan. It has also been dealing with the fallout from a bloody mutiny by paramilitary border guards in February.
The report of an official investigation into the mutiny, during which at least 80 people were killed, including 57 army officers, is silent on the reasons behind it. It rules out the involvement of politicians, Islamist militants and foreign governments. But the government’s response—including stepped up counter-intelligence and the immediate creation of a “National Crisis Management Committee”—shows it sees the revolt as more than a spontaneous outburst by hotheaded, underpaid soldiers.
With the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) opposition in shambles, the army is the government’s biggest problem. It is still seething over the losses sustained in the mutiny. But a confrontation is unlikely. To appease the generals, the mutineers, who are not part of the army, are likely to be tried under military laws. An official inquiry will look into the death of 21 border guards, who have died in army custody. The army says they committed suicide or died of natural causes, but many Bangladeshis believe they were silenced.
So corruption—like visiting disaster victims—is low in the government’s priorities. But the 20-odd members of the cabinet are seen as clean, in marked contrast to their predecessors in the government led by the BNP, toppled in a coup in January 2007. This week 12 corruption charges against Sheikh Hasina brought when she was in opposition were dropped. Her government is still very popular, despite crippling shortages of gas, electricity and water. Food prices have fallen. The press, muzzled by the BNP and the interim government that succeeded it, is much freer.
Another priority is to repair prickly relations with Bangladesh’s huge, fast-growing neighbour, India. The re-election in May of a government there led by the Congress party should be good news, since Congress and the Awami League have longstanding ties. But the BNP is already accusing the government of being ready to sell out to India. And in May, two former senior intelligence officials in Bangladesh told investigators that they had facilitated gun-running by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, to an insurgent group in India’s north-east. This confirmed a frequent Indian allegation and made it probable that, at least for now, squabbles over territory and terrorism will dominate ties between the neighbours, not the prospect of increased trade and investment.