Five days after Bangladesh’s president, at the insistence of the army, declared a state of emergency, resigned his post as head of the caretaker government and cancelled the elections that were due to be held next Monday, the full implications of the latest twist in Bangladesh’s political drama are only just becoming clear. Few now have any doubt that the country is set for a lengthy period of military-backed technocratic rule.
Fakhruddin Ahmed, a former World Bank official and ex-central bank governor summoned by the generals on Friday to replace President Iajuddin Ahmed as de facto prime minister, is now framing rules to determine how authoritarian this regime will be. Diplomats say the army charged him with executing a five-point agenda that the generals presented to the president in a tense three-hour meeting the previous day.
