BANGLADESH AWAMI LEAGUE: COMMITTED TO ELECTIONS,

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 DHAKA 001121

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/22/2018
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR PINS PHUM KDEM BG
SUBJECT: BANGLADESH AWAMI LEAGUE: COMMITTED TO ELECTIONS,
BUT WHAT ABOUT REFORM?

REF: SCA FOR A/S BOUCHER

Classified By: Ambassador James F. Moriarty. Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)

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SUMMARY
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1. (C) Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina appears in firm
control of the Awami League as she prepares to return to
Bangladesh to lead the party into Parliamentary elections.
Efforts by the military-backed Caretaker Government and her
Awami League rivals to topple her have failed, and for now
the unified party and its political allies seem to be in a
strong electoral position. The key question is whether she
will support Government-backed efforts to improve governance
within the Awami League and Parliament. Since her release
from jail to travel to the United States on medical parole in
June, Sheikh Hasina has been Sphynx-like regarding her
political plans. Her meeting with Assistant Secretary of
State Richard Boucher on October 30 will provide an excellent
opportunity to stress the importance of ending the country's
political violence and reforming its corruption-prone
democracy. Whether she supports at least some reforms will go
a long way in determining this populous, Muslim-majority
country's prospects for maintaining a stable democracy
inhospitable to extremists.

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WAITING FOR HASINA, WAITING FOR ELECTIONS
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2. (C) After languishing in jail for a year on corruption
charges and then spending four months abroad on medical
parole, Sheikh Hasina is preparing to return to Bangladesh in
early November. Her grip on the Awami League remains firm.
Efforts by the military-backed Caretaker Government and her
rivals within the party to remove her from the leadership of
the Awami League have failed. No viable alternative party
leader emerged among the members of the Presidium (the
party's highest policy-making body) despite the fact that
many of them plotted her downfall with military intelligence
while she was in jail. The broad political base she inherited
from her assassinated father, the first President of
Bangladesh, proved resilient in the face of multiple charges
of graft leveled by the Government.


3. (C) Awami League leaders, including Acting Secretary
General Syed Ashraful Islam, have expressed to us confidence
the party would participate in Parliamentary elections on
December 18 under Sheikh Hasina's leadership despite the
party's insistence on numerous preconditions for such
participation. The party has demanded Sheikh Hasina receive
bail in her graft cases so that the terms of her release are
the same as her arch-nemesis Khaleda Zia, the former prime
minister who leads the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
The party also pressed for the lifting of the State of
Emergency even though Awami League leaders privately
acknowledged the party benefited from the Emergency
regulations. (Note: Under Emergency rules, more BNP
politicians convicted of corruption would be barred from
running for Parliament than Awami League politicians. End
note.) The Awami League leadership further rejected
Government plans to hold upazilla (county) elections
immediately after the Parliamentary vote. None of these
issues appears to be an insurmountable hurdle, however,
particularly since Awami League leaders generally believe
their party-led alliance will win the election. A formal
negotiating session between the Awami League and the
Caretaker Government on October 23 ended with both sides
saying substantial progress had been made.

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WHAT TO LOOK FOR BEFORE THE ELECTION ...
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4. (C) Acting Secretary General Ashraf is among party leaders
who see the return to democracy as an opportunity to reform
the party. One early sign of Sheikh Hasina's degree of
commitment to weeding out at least some corruption-tainted
political cronies will be the Awami League's list of nominees
running for Parliament. The military's Directorate General
Forces Intelligence (DGFI),which has been trying to
manipulate politics throughout the Caretaker Government's

DHAKA 00001121 002 OF 003


rule, recently handed the party a list of 42 Awami League
members it said should not run primarily because they were
tainted by corruption. Included in the list, a copy of which
the Embassy obtained, were several relatives of Sheikh Hasina
who have been among her strongest political supporters. Among
those relatives were first cousins Sheikh Helal and Abul
Hasnat Abdullah (the former Awami League Chief Whip in
Parliament) and Kazi Zafrullah (a cousin and Presidium member
who usually accompanied Sheikh Hasina on official trips
abroad). Ahsraf said the DGFI did not demand the Awami League
refrain from nominating everyone on the list; instead, he
predicted Sheikh Hasina would accede to denying nominations
to as little as 30 percent of those named. (Note: DGFI also
handed a similar but lengthier blacklist of 102 names to the
BNP. End note.)


5. (C) Another indicator of party reform prospects will be
the Awami League manifesto that Ashraf said the party will
release in early November. Ashraf and others said the
manifesto would include a number of measures to promote good
governance and weaken the "winner-take-all" political ethos
that pervades Bangladeshi politics. Ashraf said he supported
measures to ensure Parliament elects a national President
that is acceptable to all parties; to scrap a Constitutional
requirement that members of Parliament always vote their
party,s position; and to require Parliamentary standing
committees to meet in public except when sensitive security
issues are involved. Ashraf also said he backed high-level
talks between the Awami League and the BNP to see whether
they could agree to a code of behavior under which both
parties would be more accomodating to one another. Hasina has
not ruled out a pre-election summit with Khaleda Zia to
discuss such matters, but Ashraf said he favored a summit
only if the parties could first hammer out areas of
agreement. Hasina's inner circle has argued against agreeing
to a pre-election summit with Zia.

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... AND AFTER
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6. (C) After the elections, an early sign of Awami League
willingness to maintain reforms will be whether it supports
enacting into permanent law the 87 ordinances promulgated to
date by the Caretaker Government. Many of the ordinances
promote good governance and strengthen local government and
judicial independence. Another key to the party's future will
be the fate of reform-minded party leaders such as Ashraf,
who saw his stock rise within the party during the past year
for ably guiding the Awami League in Sheikh Hasina's absence.
Other reformers, including Sheikh Hasina's political
secretary, Saber Hossain Chowdhury, have not fared as well.
In Saber's case, his stock with Sheikh Hasina sank because of
his perceived failure to provide sufficiently vocal support
in her time of need. Important, too, will be the fate of
Presidium members such as Tofail Ahmed and Amir Hossain Amu
who are widely perceived to be deeply corrupt (and are on the
DGFI's blacklist) and are also among the party leaders who
plotted against Sheikh Hasina. They called for greater
internal party democracy, not out of a love of reform but out
of personal political opportunism. Although reformist Awami
League Publicity Secretary Asaduzzaman Noor said both Tofail
and Amu hurt the party's image, Ashraf indicated they might
stay on the Presidium, at least in the near-term, in the name
of party unity.


7. (C) The Awami League boasts a cadre of mid-level leaders
with high-level education who could play a significant role
in shaping policy if the party returns to power. Among those
close to Sheikh Hasina are Dr. Hasan Mahmud, her special
personal aide who received a doctorate in environmental
chemistry in Belgium, and Dr. Mohammad Abdur Razzaque, the
party's agriculture and co-operative secretary who enjoys
talking about fertilizer and hydrology nearly as much as
politics. Hasan traveled with Hasina to the United States at
the start of her medical parole and traveled with her again
in October to England, Belgium and Canada. While no party has
said much publicly about specific policy platforms, Ashraf
and other leaders claimed the Awami League would focus on
self-sufficiency in staples such as rice and pulses, energy
development, community health, education, and improving
governance. Septel will focus on likely Awami League policies
and profile some of the leading contenders for Cabinet
positions.

DHAKA 00001121 003 OF 003



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HAS HASINA CHANGED?
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8. (C) The big question is whether Sheikh Hasina herself is
willing to be an agent of change after 27 years as supreme
leader of the Awami League. Razzaque, for one, believes she
has changed and will promote better governance. Others are
waiting to see what steps she takes upon her return to
Bangladesh. Will she axe party leaders she perceives to be
insufficiently loyal during her time in jail? Will she secure
more positions in the party hierarchy to trusted relatives?
Will she or other senior Awami League leaders such as Amu
resort to violent street protests as in past campaigns to
press their political agenda? Among the questions raised by
some Awami League leaders is what, if any, secret promises
Sheikh Hasina made to the Caretaker Government as part of the
deal that sprung her from prison on medical parole. (Note:
There is some speculation whether Hasina agreed not to stand
for Parliament. Ashraf insisted she would run. The Government
has not said definitively whether Hasina and Zia, both facing
graft charges, would be allowed to run. In private
conversations with the Ambassador, however, the Government's
lead political negotiators did not indicate any attempt to
block the two ladies from re-entering Parliament. End note.)
Some believe Hasina's sole surviving sister, Sheikh Rehana,
might return to Bangladesh during the campaign to serve as a
steadying influence. Hasina's son Sajeeb "Joy" Wazed also has
emerged as one of his mother's most trusted advisers.

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COMMENT: PROMOTING GOOD BEHAVIOR
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9. (C) Perhaps the one constant in Bangladeshi politics is
all actors -- mainstream political parties, the military and
the Government -- place importance on maintaining good
relations with the United States. Many pro-democracy
reformists have thanked the Embassy for its constant message
supporting timely elections and political dialogue. Assistant
Secretary Boucher's meeting with Sheikh Hasina therefore is a
clear opportunity to again urge her to support reforms and
good governance in order to strengthen Bangladesh's
historically dysfunctional democracy. By reiterating the
importance of acting responsibly in the upcoming elections
and of backing democratic reform, Assistant Secretary Boucher
would underline the USG's strong opposition to a return to
Bangladesh's status quo ante of vindictive, corrupt and
violent politics.
Moriarty