THE NECESSARY FASCIST INTERLUDE?:

Bangladesh 'coup' gets wide support: Despite mass arrests, the army-backed regime benefits from the fear a canceled election would have led to bloodshed. (Henry Chu, February 13, 2007, LA Times)

For a nation steeped in political crisis, life seems remarkably calm out on the sun-dappled streets.

Women haggle in the market. Shopkeepers trade the daily dish while smoking cigarettes and spitting jets of betel juice. Traffic moves at a crawl, when it moves at all, which is business as usual on the clogged roads of this densely packed capital.

But the apparent normality masks a sobering reality: namely, that democracy in Bangladesh lies battered and broken -- and the military has stepped in to fix it.

Since Jan. 11, this country of 147 million people has been under an official state of emergency. Controversial elections scheduled for last month have been suspended indefinitely. A caretaker government backed by the army now rules the land, dedicated, or so its civilian leaders say, to cleaning up Bangladesh's corrupt, thuggish political system so a free and fair poll can take place. Mass arrests have landed thousands of Bangladeshis in jail.

It has all the signs of a coup d'etat. Yet that is a term no one here is willing to use out loud, because the newly installed government, at least for the moment, enjoys broad support at home and abroad.

The widespread approval stems from the grim calculation that the alternative would have been far worse: a rigged election followed by a bloodbath.

The difficulty is finding a Franco, Pinochet, Putin, etc.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 13, 2007 9:03 AM