Monday, December 29, 2008









Reference: Stunning victory for the Awami League in Bangladesh elections

The two main parties vying for control of parliament in the elections held in Bangladesh on December 29, 2008, are the BNP and the Awami League. Early returns show an unexpectedly huge margin of victory for the Awami League. To grasp the measure and meaning of this lopsided result one has to consider that BNP's primary ally in the elections was the Jamaat-e-Islami Party of Bangladesh, an organization whose stated mission is to establish Islamic Sharia law. Jamaat-e-Islami's sister party in Pakistan, also called Jamaat-e-Islami has ties to Lashakar-e-Taiba, the Islamic organization with alleged links to the terrorist events in Mumbai. These events in November 2008 have raised the specter of yet another war between India and Pakistan and generated unprecedented geopolitical tensions in South Asia. The Bangladesh elections follows in the heels of these events and the results are best understood in this context. The crushing defeat of the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami alliance is a clear rejection of Islamic extremism by the Bangladeshis.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As an admittedly Asian-uniformed gringo (American WASP), I'm unable to tell one of these parties from the other. Are both of them believers of Islam but one is more radical than the other?
If so, I assume that the one promoting Islamic Sharia Law would be the more radical.
Would they also then be supporting the attacks on Isreal and the US, or is that limited to Middle Eastern radical Islamists?