Bangladesh: Delayed Elections and Army Opportunities

Bangladesh's Election Commission said April 5 that it will need at least 18 months to verify the country's voter list and implement further reforms, and therefore will need to delay general elections until late 2008. Fakhruddin Ahmed, the chief adviser of the interim government, has spent the last three months driving an aggressive anti-corruption campaign to save the country from a political meltdown, and certainly has a full plate. Ultimately, however, the survival of the interim government will increasingly rely on its military backing, giving the Bangladeshi army an opening to reassert itself on the political scene.