Bangladesh looks back

Bangladesh voters will go to the polls Sunday. Special correspondent Carol Honsa reports that they will decide which of two murdered men will shape the future of their desperately poor, overcrowded country. An outsider looking at election posters here could be excused for thinking that assassinated President Ziaur Rahman and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman are contesting the presidential election. Their live surrogates share the poster space, but it is second or, at best, equal billing only for acting President Abdus Sattar of Ziaur's Bangladesh National Party (BNP) and Kamal Hossain of Mujibur's Awami League.

Both former presidents were gunned down in office by disgruntled Army officers - Ziaur on May 30 by mutineers whose attempted rebellion spread no farther than the port city of Chittagong, and Mujibur on Aug. 15, 1975, at his Dacca home in a successful coup that eventually brought Ziaur into power.

But there have been 19 attempted coups in Bangladesh in less than 10 years as an independent nation.