"All we want is our daily rice and lentils," said a Dacca shopkeeper. "If we get enough at a price we can afford, we don't care what system is used to govern us." That was a widely shared feeling throughout Bangladesh last week as Sheik Mujibur Rahman, who led the country to independence from Pakistan in 1971, assumed sweeping presidential powers. Under a new constitutional amendment the parliamentary system was abolished and Bangladesh embarked on what Mujib grandly described as "a second revolution."
It was less a revolution than a desperate effort by Mujib to end the corruption, bureaucratic malfeasance and...