Editing History of Bangladesh (section)

====Hasina administration (1996–2001)====
[[Sheikh Hasina|Sheikh Hasina's]] Awami League won 146 of 300 seats in the [[June 1996 Bangladeshi general election|June 1996 elections]], just short of a majority. However, with the support of Jatiya party she formed what she called a "Government of National Consensus" in June 1996.<ref name=bn/> International and domestic election observers found the June 1996 election free and fair. The BNP soon charged that police and Awami League activists were engaged in large-scale harassment and jailing of opposition activists. At the end of 1996, the BNP staged a parliamentary walkout over this and other grievances but returned in January 1997 under a four-point agreement with the ruling party. The BNP asserted that this agreement was never implemented and later staged another walkout in August 1997. The BNP returned to Parliament under another agreement in March 1998.<ref name=bn/>

The first Hasina administration is credited for landmark initiatives in environmental and inter-ethnic peacemaking. It was responsible for signing the Ganges Water Sharing Treaty with India and the [[Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord]] with ethnic insurgents, for which Hasina won the UNESCO Peace Prize. Hasina was also one of the founding leaders of the [[Developing 8 Countries]]. In 1998, Hasina hosted a rare and unprecedented trilateral economic summit in Dhaka with Prime Ministers [[Nawaz Sharif]] of Pakistan and [[I. K. Gujral]] of India. Her summits with US President [[Bill Clinton]] in Dhaka and Washington DC focused on American energy investments for Bangladesh's [[Natural gas in Bangladesh|natural gas reserves]] and the extradition of her father's killers. However, Hasina was not keen to allow the export of Bangladeshi natural gas, despite demands from multinational firms.<ref name="ConcaDabelko2002">{{cite book |last1=Conca |first1=Ken |last2=Dabelko |first2=Geoffrey D. |author2-link=Geoffrey Dabelko |year=2002 |title=Environmental Peacemaking |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vxl87MVug4sC&pg=PA69 |publisher=Woodrow Wilson Center Press |page=69 |isbn=978-0-8018-7193-1}}</ref><ref name="Roy2000">{{cite book |last=Roy |first=Rajkumari Chandra Kalindi |year=2000 |title=Land Rights of the Indigenous Peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UQShJjSoF-MC&pg=PA164 |publisher=IWGIA |page=164 |isbn=978-87-90730-29-1}}</ref><ref name="Initiative2007">{{cite book|author=Bangladesh Development Initiative|title=Political culture in Bangladesh: perspectives and analysis : selections from the journal of Bangladesh studies|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=520MAQAAMAAJ|year=2007|publisher=Bangladesh Development Initiative|isbn=978-984-05-1782-4|page=323}}</ref><ref name="latimes">
{{cite news |last=Chen |first=Edwin |date=21 March 2000 |title=Clinton Touts Ties With Bangladesh |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-mar-21-mn-11124-story.html |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |access-date=6 January 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161117040246/http://articles.latimes.com/2000/mar/21/news/mn-11124 |archive-date=17 November 2016 |url-status=live}}
</ref><ref name="BhargavaKhatri1999">{{cite book |last1=Bhargava |first1=Kant Kishore |last2=Khatri |first2=Sridhar K. |author3=Coalition for Actions for South Asian Cooperation (Kathmandu, Nepal) |year=1999 |title=Working paper for Conference on South Asia 2010: Opportunities and Challenges, Kathmandu, December 1–3, 1999 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NcvsAAAAMAAJ |publisher=Coalition for Action on South Asian Cooperation |page=16}}</ref>

In June 1999, the BNP and other opposition parties again began to abstain from attending Parliament. Opposition parties staged an increasing number of nationwide general strikes, rising from six days of general strikes in 1997 to 27 days in 1999. A four-party opposition alliance formed at the beginning of 1999 announced that it would boycott parliamentary by-elections and local government elections unless the government took steps demanded by the opposition to ensure electoral fairness. The government did not take these steps, and the opposition subsequently boycotted all elections.<ref name=bn/>

In July 2001, the Awami League government stepped down to allow a caretaker government to preside over parliamentary elections. Political violence that had increased during the Awami League government's tenure continued to increase through the summer in the run up to the election. In August, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina agreed during a visit of former President Jimmy Carter to respect the results of the election, join Parliament win or lose, forswear the use of hartals (violently enforced strikes) as political tools, and if successful in forming a government allow for a more meaningful role for the opposition in Parliament.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://2009-2017.state.gov/outofdate/bgn/bangladesh/74099.htm |title=Background Note: Bangladesh|date=6 September 2017 |website=U.S. Department of State |access-date=8 March 2025}}</ref>