DHAKA: Bangladesh’s biggest political parties, struggling to free their detained leaders in a battle of laws and nerves with the army-backed authority, are still haunted by the bad faith and mistrust that have made them epic rivals.

Their failure to overcome that could mean they lose those leaders and are less like to dominate Bangladesh’s political scene if and as the impoverished South Asian country of more than 140 million people million moves back toward democracy.

Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chief Begum Khaleda Zia, both former prime ministers, have been in jail since around the middle of last year, facing a series of charges over alleged graft.

If convicted, they will lose their right to contest a parliamentary election that the military-backed interim government headed by former central bank governor Fakhruddin Ahmed has promised to hold next December.

Hasina and Khaleda deny the charges, saying they were false and part of a conspiracy to destroy their political careers.

A similar fate may also befall their close party colleagues, including former ministers and Khaleda’s two sons, who were also arrested for corruption committed during the 15 years Hasina and Khaleda alternated as prime ministers.

While lawyers, including known loyalists and party stalwarts, fight for the politicians’ freedom in courts, leaders and activists are now busy building national movements to pressure the authorities.

Awami and the BNP have already announced a boycott of talks with the government over election plans and threatened not to join the election unless the two ex-premiers are set free unconditionally and immediately.

This has led mid-ranking and grassroots party activists to believe their parties may, at least this once, combine to push a united campaign to win their freedom and make the authorities accept other demands such as an end to emergency rule.

SCUTTLED HOPES: But Hasina’s party moved quickly to scuttle the hopes, by saying they don’t want any unity with the BNP because it harbours “anti-Bangladesh forces” as an ally.

“BNP and its ally Jamaat-e-Islami are fanatic parties which neither believe in the existence of Bangladesh nor in the independence of the country,” said Syed Ashraful Islam, acting general secretary of the Awami League.

Critics say Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s biggest religion-based political party, opposed Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan and helped the Pakistani army in human rights violations in what was then East Pakistan.

The Awami League, then headed by its supreme leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hasina’s father, led East Pakistan’s independence battle.

Bangladesh historical documents say 3 million lives were lost in nine months of war.

During Khaleda’s second term in office, which ended in October 2006, Jamaat was BNP’s main ally in parliament and had two ministers in her cabinet.

The Awami League also demands senior Jamaat leaders, including its two ex-ministers, be tried for war crimes Jamaat vehemently denies committing.

“Unity cannot be forged with them as we have differences with them on ideology and principles,” Ashraful told reporters late on Monday.

BLAME GAME: The BNP and Awami League accuse each other of pushing the country into the current state of “uncertainties”, keeping alive their decades of “blame game”, analysts say.

“Big parties have big responsibilities to take the country back to democracy and in the process they must put the country and its people ahead of personal interests,” said Syed Mohammad Ibrahim, a defence and political analyst, himself head of a small party.

Khandaker Delwar Hossain, secretary-general of the bigger faction of the BNP, which suffered a rift in the absence of Khaleda, said the government was “trying to spoil the chances of a fair election and transition to democracy by indulging in indiscriminate arrest of leaders and harassing the top two (Khaleda and Hasina).

“Freedom- and democracy-loving Bangladeshis will never allow such conspiracies to succeed,” Delwar said.

Hasina said during a court appearance on Sunday that the government was trying to “scuttle the election and perpetuate its power”, which she urged people to resist.

The BNP has often asked for release of both Hasina and Khaleda, but the Awami League avoided demanding Khaleda’s freedom.

“That is where bad faith lies,” said a senior government official. “They will probably never come out of it, even if the nation bleeds,” he said, requesting not to be identified.

Fakhruddin took charge in January 2007 following deadly violence mostly involving supporters and party men of the two ladies, put the country under an indefinite state of emergency and also cancelled an election planned for Jan 22 last year.—Reuters