Crisis grips Bangladesh...hundreds arrested

[pscot]

DHAKA, Bangladesh —

Government supporters beat protestor

A growing sense of crisis gripped Bangladesh on Sunday as the government closed most forms of transportation into the capital, arrested hundreds and barred the main opposition alliance from holding a protest rally.

Police officers surrounded the home of the main opposition leader, Khaleda Zia, a former prime minister who leads the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and prevented her followers from rallying outside the party’s headquarters in Dhaka, the capital.

Mrs. Zia had called for a “March for Democracy” on Sunday to protest the government’s decision to hold national elections on Jan. 5. The opposition coalition has demanded that the government step aside in favor of a caretaker administration to oversee the elections. But Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, arrested by a previous caretaker government in 2007, has refused to step aside and has said that the elections will be held as scheduled.
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“The problem for the ruling party is that the voters in Bangladesh do not believe that a credible election can be held with the ruling party at the helm,” wrote Muhammad Q. Islam, an associate professor of economics at St. Louis University, in an opinion article published Sunday by an online newspaper in Bangladesh. “Her arguments for holding elections have failed to convince even her coalition partners, some of whom now have abandoned her, multiplying her problems manifold.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/30/world/asia/bangladeshs-political-crisis-grows.html?ref=world