The (বাংলাদেশ আওয়ামী লীগ Bāŋlādeś Āowāmī Līg) or the '''Bangladesh People's League''' is the main opposition party in
Bangladesh and the political catalyst for
Bengal i discontent and
Rebellion in
1971 . In the
2001 general election it got 40% of the vote and 62 of 300 seats, making it the second-largest party behind the
Bangladesh Nationalist Party .
The Awami League was founded on .
The party is now headed by
Sheikh Hasina , the daughter of the late Sheikh
Mujibur Rahman . The Awami League has been in government for two terms, eight years and a half, in the 18 democratic years among 34 years of Bangladesh's independence. It came to power after independence in
1972 under Mujib. However, the party was disturbed by internal corruption and failed to some extent to repair the nation's wounds from the independence war. As Bangladesh continued exporting jute to Egypt violating US economic sanction, the Nixon government barred food-grain supplies from reaching the country that Bangladesh had already paid for. As a result, the famine of 1974 was inevitable. 28,000 people died, and support for Mujib declined dramatically.
In January 1975, Mujib declared a state of emergency and later assumed the presidency after the Awami League-dominated parliament made the presidency an executive post. He renamed the League the Bangladesh Workers and Peasants Awami League ''(Bangladesh Krishok Sramik Awami League, BAKSAL)'', and banned all other parties. BAKSAL became the strong arm of what had turned into a dictatorship. Many of opposition political workers, mostly revolutionary communist elements, were jailed after three MP's were killed by the communist insurgency. The crackdown on opposition was aided by the elit paramilitary force ''Rakkhi Bahini''.
These negative developments led to a widespread dissatisfaction among the people and even inside the Army. In
15 August 1975 some junior members of the armed forces in
Dhaka , led by Major Faruk Rahman, and Major Rashid killed Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and all his family members who lived with him. Within two months' time four of its top leaders,
Syed Nazrul Islam ,
Tajuddin Ahmed , captain M
Mansur Ali and AHM
Qamaruzzaman were killed inside the
Dhaka Central Jail on
November 3 1975 . Only two daughters of Mujib, who were in West Germany as a part of a cultural exchange program, survived the massacre. They later took political assylam in UK. The elder daughter,
Sheikh Hasina , later moved to
India and lived in self-exile. Her stays abroad helped her gain important political friends in the West and in India that proved to be a valuable asset for the party in future.
After 1975, the party remained split in rivalling factions, and fared poorly in the 1978 parliamentary elections held under a military government. In 1981,
Sheikh Hasina returned after the largest party faction elected her its president, took over party leadership, and successfully united the factions. However, because of being underage she could not take part in the 1981 presidential elections that followed the assassination of military dictator
Ziaur Rahman . Throughout the following nine years of military dictatorship by General
Ershad , AL participated in some polls and boycotted most, nearly all of which were allegedly rigged.
When the first free and acceptable parliamentary polls since 1975 was held in 1991, Awami League emerged as the largest opposition party in the parliament. It made major electoral gains in 1994 as its candidates won mayoral elections in the two largest cities of the country: capital
Dhaka and commercial capital
Chittagong . Demanding electoral reforms, the party resigned from the parliament in 1995, boycotted the February 1996 parliamentary polls, and subsequently won 146 out of 300 seats in June 1996 parliamentary polls. Supported by a few smaller parties, Awami League formed a "Government of National Unity," and elected a non-partisan person, retired Chief Justice,
President Shahabuddin Ahmed to be the head of state.
AL's second term in office had mixed achievements. Apart from sustaining economic stability during the Asian economic crisis, the government successfully settled Bangladesh's long standing dispute with India over sharing the water of river
Ganga (also known as
Padma ) in late 1996, and signed a peace treaty with tribal rebels in 1997. In 1998, Bangladesh faced one of the worst floods ever, and the government handled the crisis satisfactorily. It also had significant achievements in containing inflation, and peacefully neutralising a long-running leftist insurgency in south-western districts dating back to the first AL government's time. However, rampant corruption allegations against party office bearers and ministers as well as detereorating law and order situation troubled the government. Its pro-poor policies achieved wide micro-econimic development but that left the country's wealthy business class dissatisfied. AL's last months in office were marred by sporadic bombing by alleged Islamist millitants. Hasina herself escaped several attempts on her life, in one of which cases two
Anti-tank Mine s were planted under her helipad in
Gopalganj District . In July 2001, the second AL government stepped down becoming the first elected government in Bangladesh to serve a full term in office.
In October 2001 election, the party won 40% of the votes up from 36% of 1996 and 33% of 1991 but got only 62 out of 300 seats as a right wing nationalist-fundamentalist alliance won two-thirds majority in the parliament with 46% votes. Since then, Awami League has formed a left-leaning alliance of 14 parties with who it intends to form an elctoral coalition for participating in future parliamentary polls, expected in December 2006 or January 2007.
In its second term in opposition since 1991, the party faced
Assassination of important party personnel. Popular young leader
Ahsanullah Master , a MP from Gazipur, was killed in 2004. This was followed by a
Grenade attack on Hasina in Dhaka, resulting in the death of 21 party supporters, including party women's secretary
Ivy Rahman . Finally, party's electoral secretary, ex finance minister, and veteran diplomat
Shah A.M.S. Kibria , a MP from
Hobiganj , was killed in a
Grenade attack in
Sylhet later that year.
In June 2005, the
Awami League got a boost, when AL nominated incumbent mayor
A.B.M. Mohiuddin Chowdhury won the important
Mayoral election in commercial capital
Chittagong by a huge margin. This election was seen as a showdown between the opposition and the ruling party. However, the killing of party leaders continued. In December 2005, the AL supported Mayor of
Sylhet narrowly escaped the third attempt on his life as a
Grenade thrown on him failed to explode.
It is widely expected that Mujib's grandson Sajib Wajed Joy, an expatriot Bangladeshi student currently in the US, would succeed Hasina as party chief in near future. Though he is yet to formally join Awami League his increasingly more frequent visits to Bangladesh, attendance of party programs, and growing popularity among party workers all indicate a repeatition of the South Asian political culture of family succession despite his being married to a non-Muslim US citizen.
