PMO HARDBALL AGAINST ERSHAD UNLEASHES BIZARRE SOAP

C O N F I D E N T I A L DHAKA 002610

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/06/10
TAGS: PREL PGOV PHUM BG KDEN
SUBJECT: PMO HARDBALL AGAINST ERSHAD UNLEASHES BIZARRE SOAP
OPERA

REF: 04 DHAKA 1572

Classified By: P/E Counselor D.C. McCullough, Reason(s): 1.4 (b),(d)


1. (C) Summary: In a riveting turn of events starting June 2,
former President Ershad stripped his number-two wife Bidisha
of all Jatiya Party positions, police then arrested her on
theft and embezzlement charges, Bidisha threatened to kill
her son and herself, Ershad divorced Bidisha as a bigamist,
and Ershad fled to Saudi Arabia. The catalyst of this
bizarre soap opera appears to be PMO concern that Bidisha was
pushing the Jatiya Party -- still a force in northern
Bangladesh -- to ally with the opposition Awami League. End
Summary.


2. (C) On June 5, Jatiya Party Presidium member Kazi Zafar
Ahmed told poloff that the Ershad/Bidisha soap opera began
several weeks ago when the BDG threatened to arrest Bidisha,
the 30-something junior wife of the eighty-something former
president, on charges to include kidnapping, bigamy, money
laundering, and espionage (apparently on behalf of India).
Ershad reportedly urged Bidisha to leave the country for her
own protection, but she refused, electing instead to assault
Ershad and trash his personal effects. Ershad then decided,
in self-defense, to have his wife arrested and told police,
and the newspapers, that she had embezzled funds and stolen a
cell phone from him. On June 2, Ershad stripped Bidisha of
all party positions, including her seat on the Presidium. On
June 4, police arrested Bidisha at the Ershads' home in the
diplomatic enclave after a brief public standoff when she
threatened to kill her child and herself.


3. (C) Other sources, widely reported in the media, describe
a somewhat different scene. Bidisha, they say, was pushing
Ershad to remove ABM Ruhul Amin Howlader as Secretary General
of the Jatiya Party in favor of Kazi Feroj Rashid, who
recently returned to the Jatiya Party fold from the
Bangladesh Jatiya Party (BJP) faction, a member of the ruling
four-party coalition. Haris Chowdhury, PM Zia's Political
Secretary and referred to by media accounts as an un-elected

SIPDIS
BNP leader in the PMO, then threatened to activate pending
corruption charges against Ershad if the change took place.


4. (C) Haris was also supposedly antagonized by Bidisha's
support for a Jatiya Party alliance with the opposition Awami
League and her alleged contacts with Indian Government
officials who encouraged her to do the same. The politically
ambitious Bidisha had persuaded her husband several years ago
to remove his estranged senior wife, the sixty-something
Raushan, from the party Presidium; Raushan, MP and leader of
the party in Parliament, favors closer ties to the BNP.


5. (C) The latest twist came June 6, when Ershad announced he
had divorced Bidisha because she remained married to and
involved with the man she had claimed to have divorced before
marrying Ershad. "One woman cannot have two husbands but she
had," Ershad told the media before leaving for Saudi Arabia.
"She has cheated me." Jatiya SYG A.B.M. Ruhul Amin Howlander
told poloff that Ershad will remain in Saudi Arabia until
June 14, and that the trip was previously arranged.

6. (C) Comment: Belying the farcical nature of this bizarre
affair is a serious political point: the PMO plays hardball
against its opponents. With 14 seats mostly in northern
Bangladesh, the Jatiya Party is still a potential player in
certain electoral scenarios that involve a broad anti-BNP
coalition. However, it is a party in apparently terminal
popular decline, with an aged leader hamstrung by 14
corruption charges pending against him from his time as
president that are held in suspense as leverage by the BNP
and previously the Awami League when it was in power. In
March 2004, Ershad complained to us that Haris Chowdhury was
threatening to jail him over a parliamentary vote. The
ex-president's bottom line was, "I can't go back to jail."
Fifteen months later, nothing seems to have changed.
THOMAS