Out on bail, Ershad's tumultuous reception puzzles critics
MOMENTS after his release from jail on January 9, the former Bangladesh dictator, Lt Gen. (retd) Hussain Muhammad Ershad, was greeted by thousands of followers, and it took his motorcade more than an hour-and-a-half to travel six km to his posh Gulshan suburb house.
Moved by the cheering crowd, Ershad, who ruled Bangladesh for nearly nine years after seizing power in a military coup in 1982, declared that his Jatiya Party would form the next government. A comment which was dismissed as 'wishful thinking' by Prof Serajul Islam Chowdhury, a leading political analyst. "It only shows he is naive and appears to have lost touch with reality,"Chowdhury added. The prevalent view: now that he is out of prison, the myth surrounding him will explode and he will find it that much difficult to explain his past.
Ershad's regime became synonymous with notoriety and deceit. The Washington Post, quoting a former attorney general, once reported that the general was proud to have, simultaneously maintained, 18 girlfriends. While corruption is perhaps an accepted feature of present day politics, it is the 'woman factor' which is most certain to land Ershad in trouble if he makes a bid to win public office a second time.
As a foreign diplomat put it: "When you're in jail you earn sympathy. But you've got to face the music when you're out." Though it is too early to say whether his party will emerge victorious in future as the next general election is four-and-a-half years away, it is a fact that Ershad is likely to remain a factor in Bangladesh politics. In the last two general elections, his Jatiya Party, which he founded with the explicit purpose of perpetuating his rule through a political process, emerged as the third largest party in Parliament securing, on both occasions, 30-odd seats in the 330-member House. He himself won from five constituencies while he was still a prisoner. "Had I been out of jail," he said immediately after his release on bail, "I would have formed the government this time." His party played a crucial role in installing the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina last June. Although the Awami League won the largest number of seats, it fell short of winning the required majority in forming the government—the Jatiya Party bailed it out. And though the Jatiya Party insists that its support was "unconditional," it is believed that there was a quid pro quo, which was securing Ershad's release.
But to the government's credit, it did not interfere with the judicial process and no one can question the ad-interim bail granted to Ershad by a five-member bench of the Supreme Court. Yet, it is also true that his bail petitions in nearly two dozen cases were never contested by the present attorney general. As a result, he got bail in one case after another since the Awami League came to power.
Says former foreign minister and eminent jurist Kamal Hossain: "The manner in which he received bail in all the cases is bound to erode the people's faith in the judiciary." That perhaps explains why former prime minister and the main opposition leader, Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), called Ershad's release "an outcome of an entente between him and the present government".
The previous BNP government filed the cases against him on charges of corruption, abuse of power and murder. A special tribunal, set up to try the former dictator after he was overthrown in 1990, found him guilty in four cases and he was sentenced to 20 years in jail. Ershad appealed against all his convictions in the higher court. He was acquitted in the arms case by the high court in which he received 10 years imprisonment from the special tribunal. Other cases are pending.
According to observers, his release could also be an Awami League ploy to undercut the opposition BNP at a time when Begum Zia is getting increasingly impatient with arch rival, Sheikh Hasina. As if to underscore the point, Ershad has threatened to tell the people what the BNP had offered him for his support in the last election.
Ershad will do everything to undermine Begum Zia because she made him "suffer so much". But what worries a section in the ruling circles is that in the process he could also vilify the Awami League and promote his political ambitions. In that event, says Chowdhury, Sheikh Hasina would definitely try to cut him down to size—put him behind bars once again, if necessary.