B
angladesh has witnessed all kinds of political regimes: one-party rule under Sheikh Mujib-ur Rahman, military dictatorships under Zia-ur Rahman and Hussain Muhammad Ershad, illiberal democracy of the 1990s coupled with interment interim (technocrats) governments and the one-party rule under Sheikh Hasina Wajid, the daughter of Mujib-ur Rahman, since 2009.
In the general elections conducted under an interim dispensation in 2009, Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party had lost to Hasina’s Awami League. Having assumed the office of prime minister for the second time (her first stint as prime minister had lasted from 1996 to 2001), in 2011, Hasina changed the rules of the game, repealing the constitutional provisions that provided for an interim government. Thus, instead of an interim government, the institution of the Election Commission was empowered to hold elections in Bangladesh. The Hasina government was also accused of manipulating the judiciary, civil bureaucracy, i.e. police, and the Election Commission in the run-up to the 2014 general elections. The opposition, led by the BNP, protested but in vain.
I visited Dhaka, the capital of the country, in 2013, as an independent academic from Pakistan with the aim of sharing my views on Bangladesh-Pakistan relations post-1971. Being a part of the post-1971 generation, I optimistically interacted with Bangladeshi academics, students, civil society and media organisations. To my surprise, a majority of the stakeholders viewed bilateral ties from the perspective of 1971 events.
Importantly, the university youth seemed very nationalistic. Some of them chanted anti-Pakistan slogans at the then Shahbagh movement, which called for the execution of the ‘convicted’ war criminals. While going through English newspapers such as the Daily Star, I gathered that the Hasina government had capitalised on the anti-Pakistan rhetoric in terms of pressuring the courts to strictly deal with members of one of her opposing parties, namely the Jamaat-i-Islami. Some members of this party were later hanged to death. The BNP leadership and cadre were ruthlessly crushed using government machinery for electoral reasons. Many a member of the combined opposition were disqualified on dubious grounds.
In addition, media houses known for impartial reporting were meted out harsh treatment in terms of curbs on official ads, sacking and arresting of pro-democracy journalists.
Importantly, Sheikh Hasina allied with the key elements of the corporate sector, the civil-military bureaucracies and the partisan media that propagated her ‘liberal’ economic agenda. The tactics paid off in the controlled elections, which the BNP-led opposition boycotted. Hasina became prime minister once again.
In her second consecutive stint, Sheikh Hasina became more authoritarian, jailing her political opponents, including former prime minister Khaleda Zia. The (social) media was further curbed; pro-democracy and rights organisations bore the brunt of autocratic measures. The regime established a virtual one-party rule in a nominally parliamentary democracy. The regime strictly implemented a neoliberal growth model that focused on private investments, export facilitation and infrastructural development. Policy consistency resulted in, on the one hand, a high GDP growth rate and, on the other, a widening of socioeconomic gaps between the tiny rich elite and the masses whose majority lived in poverty, chronic diseases and climate catastrophes.
Sheikh Hasina had massively won the 2018 elections even before they were held. From the pliant Election Commission to the oppressed opposition, the Awami League stood out as the only player in the ring in terms of consolidating the one-party model of autocratic rule.
“She [Sheikh Hasina] has cowed the press and captured the police, courts and judiciary. She has built a personality cult around her father, who was murdered in a coup in 1975 and whose face is now plastered everywhere in Dhaka, the capital. She has neutralised the BNP’s leader, Khaleda Zia, who has been under house arrest since 2018. Bangladesh’s previous two elections, in 2014 and 2018, were also massively stacked in the ruling party’s favour. The coming one could make the BNP almost defunct. To manufacture an impression of a competitive poll, observers say, the AL has encouraged its party members, their acquaintances and some defectors from the opposition to run as independent candidates.”
The other day, the BNP-led opposition announced a boycott of the upcoming general elections to be held on January 7, 2024.
From the US to the European Union, rights organisations and election monitoring platforms have raised fingers at the maltreatment being meted out to the opposition leaders and their parties. So have pro-democracy academics, journalists and the local youth. The Hasina regime, in cahoots with the Election Commission, top echelons of civil-military bureaucracy and the corporate sector, is hiding the economic implications of her neoliberal agenda of the last 14 years as depicted below.
“Rising energy and commodity prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced Bangladesh to borrow $4.7 billion from the IMF in January [2023]. Foreign reserves remain low, the banking system is stressed and the taka, the country’s currency, is under pressure. The official inflation rate, just below 10 percent, is probably an underestimate. Workers in the important garment industry are dissatisfied with a recent hike in the minimum monthly wage to 12,500 taka ($114), which is less than the increased cost of living.”
Given Hasina’s overwhelming control of the governmental machinery in tandem with the non-elective state institutions, her party, the Awami League, is all set to perform the ritual of electoral politics early next year and grab five more years to rule over Bangladeshi politics, economy, society and the state in an autocratic manner grounded in a weird form of one-party rule in a parliamentary democracy. The opposition’s last hope lies in protest politics in alliance with pro-democracy and rights voices from the media, academia, the civil society and the Bangladeshi diaspora. If the opposition reflects a weak agency as it did in the past, the Hasina-led autocracy will be perpetuated at the cost of democracy, media freedom, human rights and, above all, a progressive future.
The writer has a PhD in political science from Heidelberg University and a post-doc from UC Berkeley. He is a DAAD, FDDI and Fulbright fellow and an associate professor. He can be reached at ejaz.bhatty@gmail.com
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