General elections in Bangladesh, originally slated for Jan. 22, are now being pushed back to at least late 2008 after the country's Election Commission said April 5 that it would need at least 18 more months to implement further electoral reforms and compile a new voter list. The chief adviser of the interim government, Fakhruddin Ahmed, has spent three months mounting an aggressive anti-corruption campaign to prevent a complete political meltdown, but he has much work ahead of him. The delay, coupled with the weakening of the South Asian country's leading political parties, provides the Bangladeshi army with breathing room to expand its influence in the political arena. Bangladesh has long suffered from political chaos. The country's two warring political parties, the Awami League (AL) led by Sheikh Hasina and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by Begum Khaleda Zia, are locked in a generational power struggle that effectively has paralyzed the country. In the lead-up to the Jan. 22 elections, the AL accused the BNP of rigging the elections by influencing the previous interim government to add an estimated 14 million "ghost voters" to the list of 91.4 million voters. This point of contention led to a series of violent street clashes and widespread strikes. Amid the political chaos, Fakhruddin Ahmed, an economist by trade and the former governor of the country's central bank, was appointed chief adviser of the nonparty interim government Jan. 11. Since then, Ahmed has pushed ahead with a hard-hitting anti-corruption campaign, targeting more than 160 bureaucrats, business tycoons and security officials and senior politicians, including Zia's own son. In a country that competes with Nigeria each year for the position of world's most corrupt nation, this is no easy task. The BNP and AL have laid low since Ahmed came to power mainly because the two parties can use the extra time to shore up support. Neither party has a clear advantage over the other in the polls, and both are desperately searching for political allies to gain the upper hand. But Ahmed cannot be confident that the political parties will remain tame for another 18 months. All too often, officials with interim governments in South Asia have a habit of falling into the pit of corruption. And when the tide starts to turn against the provisional governments while the country's main political parties are still in disarray, the responsibility falls to the military to step in and restore order. The military's empowerment already has started taking effect in Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi army goaded the former president to impose emergency rule and ban political activity Jan. 11. Bangladeshi army chief Lt. Gen. Moeen U. Ahmed has been playing a much more visible role in Bangladesh over the past few weeks, acting more like a politician than a general by delivering speeches throughout the country on "Rethinking Political Development." The general also has issued harsh condemnations of the AL and BNP, saying "In the 36 years since independence, politicians have not given us anything good. They have even failed to give due recognition to the national leaders." The AL and BNP are taking note of the army's increasing prominence in the caretaker government, as they realize that building closer ties to the military will become all the more necessary for them to escape political irrelevance. The BNP-AL power struggle has split the population pretty evenly, leading both parties to flirt with the country's Islamist parties for larger voting blocs. The Islamists' empowerment worries the Bangladeshi army, which wishes to preserve the country's historically secular identity. Even the BNP and AL are becoming conscious of the dangers involved in spreading Islamist influence, and would not mind military backing to help quell the Islamist rise. The BNP probably will have a harder time than the AL in winning favor with the army this time around. In October 2006, several members of the BNP deserted to form a new group called the Liberal Democratic Party. Many of the deserters are retired high-ranking military officers that accused the BNP of being too corrupt and too lax in cracking down on Islamist extremism. The situation in Bangladesh is in some ways similar to Pakistan, where that nation's military has successfully used political instability and security concerns to dominate the state. The difference, however, is that in Pakistan the military continues to rule the country directly through a uniformed president and civil-military hybrid state. In Bangladesh, however, the military is working through a caretaker administration composed of bureaucrats, technocrats and other government functionaries. Bangladesh, despite its past experience with direct military rule has moved toward a civilian — albeit somewhat turbulent — order, so it is unlikely the military will return to direct rule. That said, the political pendulum is slowly moving back toward the military, and the Bangladeshi army is in a prime position to establish itself as the stealth kingmaker of the government.