Three-term PM of Bangla, widow of deceased dictator Ziaur Rahman, head of the Bangla Nationalist Party, an apparent magnet for corruption ...
is likely to be brought to trial for the fire-bombing deaths during the BNP anti-government campaigns in the first few months of this year, and with arrest warrants issued against 28 BNP leaders and activists in association with a bus burning on January 30, it is clear that the government is heading towards a final solution to the BNP problem.
The march towards a de facto one-party state thus seems close to unstoppable. By the time the next elections roll around in 2019, the BNP may well have ceased to exist as any kind of a political force capable of providing any kind of challenge to the AL.
The question then of whether the party will contest in the next national elections or under what dispensation such elections will be held becomes a moot point.
Come 2019, there is every chance that the BNP will no longer be with us, or at least not in any recognisable form or in the form of a viable opposition party that has a realistic chance of coming to power.
In short, it looks as though the AL will get its wish, which, if you have been following the public and private pronouncements of its leaders and fellow travelers for the past few years, has been made pretty clear.
The AL feels that having to alternate in office with the BNP throughout the 1990s and 2000s has kept them from being able to enact the policies this country needs and to see through their vision for developing Bangladesh into a middle-income country and beyond.
What Bangladesh needs, according to this school of thought, is steady, uninterrupted, and focused leadership for the next decade or so, with none of the distractions and inefficiencies that come with regular alternating of power, and the end result will be a thriving, prosperous, and developed nation.
The catch-phrase (which, interestingly enough, was precisely the same one used by the BNP, who had a remarkably similar vision, differing only in that they envisaged themselves at the epicentre of power) in vogue is the "Malaysia Model." Another one is "development before democracy."
Now, I very much doubt that the AL will abandon the party's commitment to formal democracy in the sense that regular elections will still be held. The only difference will be that without an opposition worth the name, the election results will be a foregone conclusion and elections will appear as little more than a small blip in the multi-year planning for Bangladesh's future.
Is this all bad? Proponents of the scheme and supporters of the government will point out that de facto one-party rule has worked very well for the countries in South-East Asia, and that it was the ability to stay in power for a long period of time to see through the vision of the ruling party that was instrumental in their development.