Bangladesh’s interim government chief advisor Prof Muhammed Yunus may want to take his time for implementing reforms needed to institutionalise democracy in South Asia’s youngest nation. But indications are that he will not only come under pressure to go for early polls but also to withdraw the ban on the nation’s leading Islamist groups, Jamaat-e-Islami.
The leading Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has already demanded a ” clear roadmap” for holding parliament elections. Its longterm ally, Jamaat-e-Islami, wants to first restore itself as a recognised political party and its lawyers are preparing to move the court to get the ban on it lifted.
The Supreme Court upheld the ban on Jamaat-e-Islami just before the ouster of the Hasina government, in which its highly motivated cadres, alongwith those from other Islamist groups, played a pivotal role once the student agitation against job quotas morphed into a mass upsurge. The Jamaat’s party constitution was seen as incompatible with........