Bowing to Foes, Premier Resigns in Bangladesh

With thousands of protesters massing in the streets, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia finally gave in to pressure and resigned Saturday to end a political deadlock that has hobbled her nation’s economy for the past two years.

President Abdur Rahman Biswas dissolved the National Parliament and appointed a former Supreme Court chief justice to head a nonpartisan caretaker government and prepare for new elections.

The developments were a triumph for Bangladesh’s opposition, which had mounted a ruinous campaign of strikes and violent demonstrations to force Zia, 50, the widow of assassinated military ruler Ziaur Rahman, from power.

Hasina Wajed, the main leader of the three-party opposition coalition, proclaimed Zia’s resignation a victory for the “people and democracy.” Tens of thousands of Bangladeshis danced, sang and cheered in the streets of Dhaka, the capital.

Zia was sworn into office on March 19 but immediately faced bitter protests that the Feb. 15 elections that returned her and her Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to power were rigged.

The opposition boycotted those polls and launched a “noncooperation movement” three weeks ago to force Zia out on the grounds that her government, which originally took office in March 1991, was too corrupt to hold free and fair elections.

Shortly after Zia stepped down, Wajed called off the protests.

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Deadly street clashes and a series of general strikes since March 1994 have torpedoed Zia’s ambitious dream of wooing outside investors to prime the pump of the Bangladeshi economy.

A quarter of Bangladesh’s garment factories, the major foreign-exchange earner in a densely populated and impoverished country where the average wage is just $220 a year, were idled earlier this year for want of orders.

At the BNP rally where she announced her resignation, Zia accused her opponents of destroying the nation’s economy to get at her, and urged her followers to fight “conspirators and foreign lackeys” in the coming election campaign.

The opposition’s noncooperation movement reached its climax last week. Top civil servants met with Biswas on Wednesday and warned him that the political turmoil was preventing them from doing their jobs.

On Saturday, thousands of government employees went into the streets to join in the clamor for Zia’s departure. Her portraits were removed from many offices on the grounds that she was an “illegal prime minister.”

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Wajed’s Awami League, the country’s largest opposition party, called on its followers to besiege the presidential palace unless a neutral interim government, which the three major opposition parties have insisted on to ensure fair elections, was in place by noon. Thousands of Bangladeshis massed outside the National Press Club, ready to be led in a march on Biswas’ official residence if necessary.

Security forces were put on alert, and paramilitary soldiers were posted outside the homes of Zia’s 27 ministers.

Elsewhere, at least five people were killed Saturday in clashes between rival political activists.

Biswas appealed for restraint “in the historic hour of transition of power to the nonparty caretaker government.”

Earlier in the day, he named Mohammad Habibur Rahman, 66, the former head of the South Asian country’s Supreme Court, to the newly created office of “chief advisor.”

Rahman, the consensus candidate of the ruling and opposition parties, was sworn in late Saturday. He now has the status and privileges of a prime minister and will head a nonparty, 11-member interim caretaker government until new elections can be held within 90 days.

Mahfuz Anam, editor of the Daily Star, an independent Dhaka newspaper, called Zia’s resignation a “capitulation” to opposition demands.

“They wanted a neutral caretaker government, they wanted the Sixth Parliament to be dissolved, they wanted Begum [Mrs.] Zia to leave office. And they got all three,” the editor said.

But Anam said that Saturday’s dramatic events were also a “victory for the system,” in that Zia acted strictly according to the law in a country where military regimes have been in power for 15 of the 25 years since independence.