Around Sunset during the month of Ramadan Muslim fasting, something remarkable happens in the Bangladaise capital, Dhaka. The streets of this city of more than 10 million people, known for its hectic agitation and suffocation, become silent and empty.
But for political parties, which know the persuasive powers of the full belly, sunset is their great time.
The parties of Iftar, where the faithful break their fasts, were watched closely at the end of Ramadan last week for which direction the Bangladesh could take after the overthrow of its authoritarian chief last summer.
Who attended which part? Who was sitting next to? In the Bangladesh’s political vacuum, the answers to these questions offered clues to the way the new alliances could train and even the management of changing geopolitical winds.
To assess the political temperature, we invited ourselves to one.
It was organized in a roof restaurant by Gono Odhikar Parishad, a small part born from a wave of previous student demonstrations in 2018, before last year which overthrew Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The party had made arrangements for 600 people and 900 presented themselves. Plates of fried snacks and candies have been transmitted. The servers kept drinks with flowing yogurt.
There was one thing that no one seemed to have thought: how to get hundreds of people who did not eat or hydrate for 15 hours on the top floor? Certainly not by climbing eight stairs.
The crowd, teeming in the small hall painted like the “starry night” of Van Gogh, tried to sneak into an elevator with an ability of 18 people.
The elevator operator – which remains one thing in this part of the world – had difficult work. A soft man with a beard tinged in red, he was seated on a plastic stool by the pimples. He loaded each trip with the precision of a merchant weighing grapes, unloading bodies one by one until the elevator is no longer on capacity.
At the top, the restaurant raised people.
Dozens of tables have been marked reserved for political parties or reserved for journalists. They were mainly men, with a pinch of women.
Sangeeta Huq, head of the youth division of the young party, said that she had attended five Iftar parties in the first two weeks of Ramadan.
“Each wing, each division of our own party has an Iftar-youth wing, Labor wing, a wing of human rights,” she said.
From the podium to her, the speech after the speech was less led by the guests on an empty stomach and more at the dozen cameras. The theme was clear: the country needed an election.
The moment of this election is at the heart of a political fracture. Some people want it right away. Others first want reforms, to avoid rehearsal of past fake votes.
Dominating the news, and of course the chatter of the Iftar parties, was the discomfort between the Bangladesh army and the interim government focused on students.
Students are increasingly wary of the army chief, General Waker-Uz-Zaman. Some people think that the general, a parent of Ms. Hasina, the ousted Prime Minister, tries to open a space for a rebirth of his deposited party.
Others suspect that the army chief is pressure for the first elections because he has concluded an agreement with the long -standing opposition of Ms. Hasina, the nationalist party of Bangladesh, or BNP
The leaders of this party, on the other hand, suspect that students use their influence on the government and in the streets, to delay the elections in order to buy time and organize as a political force themselves.
Another big subject in Dacca was the place where India – the giant neighbor who has long supported Ms. Hasina and now gave her shelter – was held throughout the political stampede.
New Delhi largely pinned the fall of Mrs. Hasina to what she called a plot between the BNP and Jamaat-E-Islami, the main Islamist party, combing them both as extremists.
But in a sign of changing time, the Indian diplomats presented themselves to the Iftar gatherings for both parties.
“Very busy times,” said Mia Golam bywar, the secretary general of Jamaat, whose calendar during Ramadan turned around the parties of Iftar. “We have the impression that this is our great time.”
It boasted that 39 diplomatic missions were represented at the Iftar party in Jamaat.
Just at the corner of the event on the roof of Gono Odhikar, a local BNP branch organized its own Iftar celebration in a tent in a school courtyard.
People were sitting in round tables while Biryani boxes and soda cans were unloaded with a truck. A speaker on the main road supported the names of the dozens of dignitaries present.
When the local BNP chief, Ariful Islam Arif, took his turn at the microphone on a crowded scene adorned with flowers, he became emotional.
“I missed this for seven years because I was in prison,” he said.
SAIF HASNAT Contributed reports.
