Political Quotes

“The political standoff between the two main political parties in Bangladesh has rocked that country and threatened its democracy, its stability, and its economic progress. Throughout 2013 and in the run-up to elections last week, a series of general strikes paralyzed Bangladesh, and hundreds were killed in clashes between rival political factions. Opposition leaders and human rights activists were arrested, and Bangladeshi courts were used to target opposition figures and their sympathizers. The feud in Bangladesh pits Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the leader of the ruling Awami League party, against Khaleda Zia, a former Prime Minister who is the leader of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP. The leaders, known to their countrymen as the ``two ladies,'' have dominated Bangladeshi politics since democracy was restored in the mid-1990s, when Hasina's Awami positioned itself as secular and social democratic in ideology and Zia's BNP as more centrist and religious. Tense relations between the two women and their supporters were further inflamed last year when a third party allied with BNP was barred from participating in the elections and the government declined to dissolve itself in favor of a caretaker government that would exist only to supervise the elections. This had been the custom in Bangladesh in prior elections. Prime Minister Hasina's actions convinced Ms.…”