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Bangladesh
A new party for Bangladesh's fray
Feb 22nd 2007
From The Economist print edition
PARTY politics in Bangladesh, long a double-act as durable and acrimonious as Laurel and Hardy, has a new entrant. Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel-prize-winning microfinancier, has launched a new party, Nagorik Shakti (Citizens' Power). At the least, this may force the two main parties, Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Awami League, led by Sheikh Hasina Wajed, to behave better.
The test of that, however, may not come for some time. The generals who intervened in the country's failing democracy on January 11th by forcing the president to declare a state of emergency and cancel a scheduled election, seem to be settling in for the long haul. This week they told the civilian government they back to prepare voter-identity cards for the next parliamentary election, for which no date is set, saying this would take eight to ten months.
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