Hasina resurgent

May 10th 2007 DHAKA
From The Economist print edition
With troubling implications

“IF YOU step on the tail of a snake, you have to kill it,” said one of Bangladesh's senior politicians when the military-backed interim government that seized power in January attempted to exile the country's two leading politicians: the feuding begums, Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Sheikh Hasina Wajed of the Awami League.

See the conquering heroine come

The attempt has ended in failure. This week the government, under domestic and international pressure, abandoned its efforts to keep Sheikh Hasina, a former prime minister, from returning from abroad. She swept back to the sort of welcome usually reserved for rock stars, despite the government's best efforts to prevent her supporters gathering. Even Mrs Zia, prime minister until last October, whom the government also tried to push into exile, welcomed her rival's return.

With its “minus-two solution” in a shambles, the emergency government has to deal with the consequences. It may hope the courts will convict the many civilian politicians whom its army sponsors have arrested, including most of the leaders of the two main parties. Sheikh Hasina herself faces murder and corruption charges. But if the courts do not oblige—and charges against politicians have never brought convictions in the past—Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh's first president, will be favourite to become the next prime minister, assuming elections are held by the end of 2008, as the government has promised.

It seems Bangladesh will not get the clean break from feudal politics that many had hoped for. Last week Muhammad Yunus, a micro-credit pioneer and winner of last year's Nobel prize for peace, reversed his decision to enter the country's messy politics. Meanwhile, Mrs Zia, whose elder son is in prison accused of corruption, has appointed her younger brother vice-president of her party.

It all seems so predictable. To its credit, the emergency government has aimed to end a culture of impunity in a state rotten with corruption. It has tried to improve the judiciary, stabilise the economy and promised, though so far failed, to put an end to the brutality of its security forces. It has also shown a soldierly taste for micro-managing civilians—including enforcing “no honking zones” in the capital.

But the government's main aim, by its own declaration, is to make Bangladesh's political parties behave more lawfully and democratically. It is hard to know how it will achieve this, unless by force or by suspending elections—steps that would be neither lawful nor democratic.