In an announcement on state television
... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
, Chief Elections Commissioner Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad urged all parties to take part in the contest for the 300-seat parliament and said that the army would be deployed across the volatile nation to prevent festivities between political rivals.
"The election will be held on January 5," Ahmad said in his widely-anticipated address.
An alliance of 18 opposition parties immediately rejected the plans and called a 48-hour nationwide blockade of roads, railways and waterways from Tuesday morning in protest to force Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia show such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums..
to quit and make way for a caretaker government to oversee the election.
"We reject the election schedule. We ask the election commission to suspend the date until a political consensus on election-time government is reached. We won't take part in any farce in the name of elections." opposition front man Fakhrul Islam Alamgir told news hounds.
Commissioner Ahmad said he had asked President Abdul Hamid -- whose post is largely ceremonial -- to negotiate an end to the dispute between Hasina's Awami League and the opposition which is dominated by former premier
Khaleda ZiaThree-term PM of Bangla, widow of deceased dictator Ziaur Rahman, head of the Bangla Nationalist Party, an apparent magnet for corruption ...
's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
"We've asked the president to personally initiate special steps and end this unbearable impasse," Ahmad said.
"I've asked all political parties to uphold the will of the people, maintain peace and compromise."
Hasina has rejected the calls for a caretaker government, and instead formed a multi-party interim cabinet last week which is largely made of her allies.
She asked the BNP to join the cabinet but her invitation was bluntly refused by the opposition.
While previous elections have been organised by non-party caretaker governments, Hasina scrapped the arrangement in 2011.
She argued that the system had previously paved the way for the army to seize power in a country which has witnessed at least 19 coups since 1975.
The announcement of an election date is expected to add to the tensions in the violence-plagued country, after weeks of deadly protests by the BNP and its Islamists left at least 30 people dead and hundreds injured.
Security has been tightened with the deployment of paramilitary border guards in major cities, private television station Somoy said.
A police front man told AFP that a senior BNP leader was tossed in the clink
Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit!
on Monday night.
This year Bangladesh has been reeling from the worst political violence since its independence after a controversial war crimes court handed down death sentences to the leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami
...
The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka
The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an
independentbranch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores...
, the largest Islamic party which is banned from fielding candidates on January 5.
At least 150 people have died in the festivities, pitting tens of thousands of Jamaat supporters against police, paramilitaries and ruling party activists.
US Ambassador Dan Mozena met Bangladesh's new Foreign Minister Mahmood Ali Monday, stressing the need for dialogue between the two major parties.