Political uproar awaits Bangladesh
Mahfuz R. Chowdhury
The contentious actions being taken by the government and the opposition's reaction to them would lead one to believe that another political turmoil is looming in Bangladesh.
Since 1991, Bangladesh politics and governance have been controlled by two dynastic families, who have for all practical purposes remained each other's sworn enemy. One family is led by the current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the daughter of the leader of the liberation movement of 1971 Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The other is led by the current opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia, the widow of renowned freedom fighter Gen. Ziaur Rahman.
Both Mujib and Zia ruled Bangladesh, but their iron-fisted rules were surrounded by many controversies and ended in their assassination while in office. The power vacuums following their assassinations prompted their die-hard followers to help establish the present dynastic rule by elevating the two women, the leaders' heirs apparent, to lead their respective parties -- Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party. The ladies have eventually assumed autocratic rule within their parties.
The two ladies have been head of government alternatively, and both administrations were marked by huge irregularities. They tolerated massive corruption and injustices by their party members and supporters. Their human rights violations were equally appalling. According to Amnesty International, the special police force Rapid Action Battalion (Rab), established in 2004, has been implicated in the killing of at least 700 people despite repeated pledges by both ladies to end extrajudicial killings.
With equal grass root support or popularity, both parties in the past enlisted the support of the Jamaat e Islami Party. When Khaleda Zia was last in power, she maneuvered things to put down the opposition and bolster her own re-election prospects. The opposition led by Sheikh Hasina resorted to agitation, leading to political turmoil in 2006. What followed was an army-backed dispensation that lasted for two years.
The army backed caretaker government enjoyed rare popular support at the time, and it also initiated vital democratic reforms in the regulation of political parties, election, power decentralisation and judicial independence. But such valiant efforts all ended in utter failure. It handed over power to Sheikh Hasina after holding an election.
The opposition rejected the election result on ground of manipulation by India. An article in The Economist has backed this claim. The argument that Sheikh Hasina made secret deals with India gained traction after the article detailed India's benefits from its cozy relation with Bangladesh. In rebuffing the gain that Bangladesh could also expect in exchange for the transit facilities for India, the opposition uses the argument of water sharing fiasco that India created for Bangladesh.
Sheikh Hasina seems more interested in using her current parliamentary mandate to find a way to extend her rule by suppressing the opposition than addressing the critical problems facing the nation, such as runaway prices of staple foods, acute gas and electricity shortages, crises with regard to infrastructure, unemployment, rising crime rates, police brutality, campus riots, rampant corruption, and an ongoing stock market scandal.
To ensure her firm grip on power and to prevent any kind of dissent in her own party, Sheikh Hasina surrounded herself with loyalists by eliminating the moderate and independent party stalwarts from decision making. All vital decisions must now meet with her approval.
To reduce the power of her nemesis, Khaleda Zia, corruption charges were filed against her. Her two sons were indicted earlier on similar grounds by the Hasina administration. The charges against them may well be true, but they are not sitting well with the BNP supporters.
An amendment to the constitution to do away with the earlier agreed-upon system of caretaker administrations to oversee elections was enacted unilaterally by the Hasina administration. But no one expects the opposition to accept such a unilateral change to the constitution for fear of election manipulation.
Sheikh Hasina stripped Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus from his position in the Grameen Bank, which he had founded to promote microcredit among the rural poor, by using trumped-up charges and his age. His crime was that he was becoming too popular, and at the same time a potential rival in future elections.
These actions epitomise Bangladeshi politics, where personal vendetta has time and again overtaken national interests! As personal vengeance has now become more fierce and intense, the situation is getting even more precarious day by day.
Currently, there are four major players in Bangladesh politics, and each holds substantial power. They are: the two parties that the two ladies control, the Islamist group of which Jamaat e Islami Party is a part of, and finally the army. Given the intensity and scope of the present conflict, the ensuing power struggle is thus likely to turn ugly.
The actions of Hasina's administration are on collision course, and the response by the aggressive opposition, led by Khaleda Zia, is equally stern. The Islamist group, a formidable force, demonstrated its strength in 2005 by exploding over 400 bombs in 300 locations and killing judges, lawyers and policemen. It has been implicated in the notorious grenade attack in 2004 on a rally of the then opposition leader Sheikh Hasina, which took the lives of 22 people.
Democracy never got a chance to flourish in Bangladesh. Its system of governance was always centered and built on individual leadership cult, which has now given birth to the dual dynastic rule.
If the country's past violent history and the present realities of the Middle East are any guide, the dynastic rules in Bangladesh will only bring more chaos and confusion where neither democracy nor economy would get a chance to prosper. As none of the key players seems to be prepared to give in, the world must wait for the next political turmoil in Bangladesh.
The writer teaches Economics at Farmingdale State College, New York.
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