A day after results of the January 7 rigged elections were announced by the Bangladesh Election Commission, the country’s Foreign Minister A K Abdul Momen announced that a “briefing” for foreign diplomats would be held at Dhaka’s Foreign Service Academy on January 9.
When foreign diplomats arrived at the venue on January 9, they took their seats laid out at the sprawling lawns. They were pleasantly surprised when they found that the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry had actually organised a ‘Meet and Greet’ programme and that there would be no formal, official briefing.
Momen himself declared from the podium that the guests could mingle with their “colleagues and friends” and partake of snacks and drinks. One guest, US Ambassador Peter D Haas, who moments earlier had made a quiet entry and got busy talking to a few other diplomats, broke away and slipped out, gripping his now-familiar sleek briefcase. He neither had any snacks nor any drinks. He was seen walking away from the venue with an aide behind him.
Moments later, the British High Commissioner Sarah Cooke too walked out of the venue.
Neither Haas nor Cooke wanted to be part of a social gathering, especially in the backdrop of the rigged elections and their own restrained reactions that had been diplomatically worded, leaving them open to interpretations.
The ruling Awami League government is apparently joyous and the political leaders are savouring the party’s ‘victory’ in a questionable election marked by massive electoral malpractices and vote rigging – all well documented. But, well-placed sources in Dhaka and New Delhi said the Awami League government is “nervous”.
The swearing-in ceremony of the new cabinet, earlier scheduled for January 15, will now be held tomorrow, prompting officials in Dhaka and New Delhi to wonder what the reason behind the “hurried shuffling” of the date could be. Sheikh Hasina and a small circle of top Awami League ministers know that US punitive measures are on their way.
“What they perhaps do not know is the nature of the American punitive measures, their intended targets and the consequences,” an official said, adding that the US State Department’s diplomatically-worded statement on the election could be “misleading for many” at this point in time.
Meanwhile, the European Union’s official reaction to the election appears to be at variance with the reports submitted to it by its four-member technical assessment team. According to sources, the team members told two Awami League volunteers, who had been assigned to provide support to them, that their services were no longer required. The volunteers’ services were discontinued on January 6, a day before the elections.
During casual conversations with the Awami League volunteers, the team members minced no words to say that the ruling regime should be “punished” but did not explicitly say whether such punishment could be in the form of economic sanctions. However, the technical team members’ findings did not quite reflect in the EU’s statement.
