The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, had failed to rise above vindictiveness and petty politics that proved debilitating to Bangladesh's democracy, said former US envoy in Dhaka James F Moriarty in a diplomatic cable sent to Washington on June 3, 2009.
The cable was sent before the visit of the assistant secretary of state for south and central Asian affairs Robert O Blake in 2009.
Moriarty also said, 'Bangladeshi political system that features two dominant parties whose leaders, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party Chairwoman Khaleda Zia, revel in petty partisanship'.
'A fight between the Awami League and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party over the seating chart for parliament prompted an opposition boycott of the legislative body's first weeks. The BNP also reacted with fury to Hasina's efforts to evict the party's leader, Khaleda Zia, from her home on the Dhaka Cantonment ground,' the cable added.
The diplomatic wire said, 'A tearful personal visit by [Khaleda] Zia to Hasina when her estranged husband died in early May raised some hopes of a detente between the two ladies, and Hasina reportedly is looking to establish a back channel of communications with Khaleda Zia.'
According to the cable, Bangladesh, a moderate Muslim-majority country of
nearly 150 million people that is friendly to the United States, is surprisingly a hopeful place despite the daunting problems it faces: recurring natural disasters; poverty; overpopulation; porous borders attractive to terrorists; and a political system that features two dominant parties whose leaders, prime minister Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda Zia, revel in petty partisanship.
Yet that's only part of the story. Bangladesh has made huge progress in a number of areas, and is clearly no longer the 'international basket case' once described by a former US secretary of state, said the cable.
'It is now a thriving democracy that in December 2008 held its freest, fairest and most credible parliamentary elections since its independence in 1971,' it added.
Bangladesh, the seventh-most populous country in the world, returned to democracy with parliamentary elections in December 2008 after two years of an unelected caretaker government.
According to the cable, Sheikh Hasina's Awami League won at least in part due to a positive message promising an end to the hyper-partisanship of Bangladesh's traditional 'winner-take-all' politics. She filled her cabinet with many new faces, pushing from centre stage many of the Awami League politicians closely associated with the dysfunctional politics of the past. The media, which faced constant threats from military censors during the caretaker government, has blossomed in recent months, freely criticising many of the new government's policies.
