One of the main right-wing opposition parties, Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s (BNP) chairperson and three-time prime minister, Khaleda Zia, is now on conditional bail in two corruption cases and was on home quarantine. After getting bail on March 25, the 74-year-old widow of former Bangladesh president Ziaur Rahman, has been secluded at her residence. But when the COVID-19 is in its peak in Bangladesh, the opposition leader reportedly began a series of meetings with her senior party members and her rightwing, fundamentalist allies.

Last week she met with her party’s secretary-general Mirza Fakhrul Islam and participated in a two-hour meeting. One of the close sources of her party admitted that their party’s acting chairperson and Zia’s eldest son, Tarique Rahman, who is now living in exile in London and has been awarded life sentence for his involvement in a grenade attack to kill then opposition leader Sheikh Hasina and other leaders of her party in 2004, also joined the meeting via Skype. After that, Zia also met with other senior members of her party. The meeting lasted for more than one and a half hours.

Zia also held another meeting with her ally leader Mahmudur Rahman Manna. co-founding convener of Nagarik Oikya Parishad, which wants to be the third major political party of Bangladesh. This meeting also went on for more than one and a half hours. Manna later told the media that it was a courtesy meeting about Eid-Ul-Fitr preparations. But it didn’t look like one. And within a short time, other alliance leaders started calling on the former PM.

Defying lockdown directives  

The main ally of BNP, Jamat-e-Islami,  the Islamic fundamentalist party of Bangladesh, is trying to create chaos in the country by manipulating the COVID-19 situation. When the government imposed a ban on the congregation prayers in the mosques, they tried to take over the control of the mosques and tried to portray the government as anti-Islam.

Before Eid-Ul-Fitr, which was celebrated on May 25, the government had enforced a ban on residents living in Dhaka and its neighboring cities from visiting their villages as the capital city and its adjoining areas were the hotspots of COVID-19. The government didn’t want that during the Eid vacation people from these hotspots should travel to other parts and carry the virus along to their villages.  The Jamat-e-Islami along with BNP workers tried to take political mileage out of this. They organized `crying processions’, just like during Muharram, in many cities against the government, and targeted the ruling party by saying that the government has forbidden the Eid celebration for the common people. However, the government managed to tackle the situation wisely.

The Jamat-e-Islami leaders organized a huge funeral prayer in a district town of Brahmanbaria after the death of one of their alliance leaders in April. Over 100,000 people gathered at the funeral prayer despite the fact that Bangladesh had imposed a ban on no more than five people attending prayers at one time during the lockdown. This sparked fears of a fresh coronavirus outbreak emerging from the event. The idea behind the event was a show of strength, and also to disrupt the government plan to stop the spread of the virus in the country. After that event, a phone conversation was leaked that showed the 'Aamir' (chairman)of Jamat-e-Islami giving orders to the local leaders of Brahmanbaria to arrange the mass gathering. He was heard saying, “We have to show our strength to the government and there was no need to maintain the (lockdown)guidelines regarding corona.” 

Leaders of the BNP and Jamat-e-Islami are thinking that the corona pandemic will totally change the political situation in the country and will help them seize power once again. So, they are advising BNP leaders and other allies to destabilize the government by organizing such mass events in defiance of government directives. They believe that the government will not be able to cope with the situation and will fail miserably, thus giving the right-wing and Islamic fundamentalist alliance of BNP-Jamat the opportunity to occupy the pole position once again in the county's politics.

(The writer is a Dhaka-based editor. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at swadeshroy@gmail.com)