Firm up democracy in Bangladesh Perspective | The Statesman | February 05, 2007
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=4&theme=&usrsess=1&id=145738 Elections scheduled for 22 January in Bangladesh were cancelled five days after the President and head of the caretaker government, Iajuddin Ahmed, declared Emergency. The President was criticised for being too close to the previous government, a coalition of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the religious Jama'at-e-Islami. Under pressure from all the Opposition parties, his last act was to make way for military involvement in the preparation of the country for elections acceptable to Bangladeshis and the international community. The Opposition Awami League, after some hesitation by its leader, Sheikh Hasina, refused to participate in the election. She claimed the electoral roll contained up to 14 million fake names, the caretaker administration was biased in favour of the outgoing government and the Election Commission designed to ensure a return of the BNP/Jama'at coalition. A new, temporary administration has been sworn in. (This usually operates for three months between elections, since the main political parties in Bangladesh are animated by such mutual loathing that a direct transition is believed to be impossible). The head of this interim arrangement is Fakhruddin Ahmed, a former World Bank official. He has lived outside Bangladesh for many years, but was made governor of Bangladesh (central) Bank by the BNP government. His appointment has been welcomed as an honourable choice, untainted by corruption or the highly partisan administrative and electoral machinery of the country. This interim government is committed to an unpublished five-point agenda drawn up by the military. Its tasks contain the classic "clean-up" beloved of military take-overs ~ attacking corruption, overhauling the electoral commission, improving the governance of civil service and depoliticising the judiciary. It will also reform the power sector, traditionally a lucrative source of plunder for politicians. Four thousand arrests have been made since Emergency was declared, among them alleged criminals, outlaws and corrupt politicians and officials. The administration's spokesperson admits elections are unlikely within 90 days, and suggests it will take at least six months. There has been great relief in the country that the stand-off between the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Awami League, which threatened to play itself out on the streets, has been suspended. The garments sector can resume its flourishing export trade. Shopkeepers will not have to observe the frequent Opposition hartals ~ political strikes ~ which force them to close. People can go about their precarious daily livelihood unmolested. Yet behind the deployment of troops to establish order, basic rights have been revoked: media censorship has been imposed, political and trade union activity banned. No one knows how authoritarian ~ or how lasting ~ these "temporary" arrangements may be. If they have some characteristics of a coup, the Army is likely to remain discreet, since it has a worldwide reputation for contributing military personnel to UN-peacekeeping missions; it will not wish to jeopardise profitable UN contracts, under which 12,000 soldiers are serving abroad. Democracy ~ in the highly idiosyncratic form it takes in Bangladesh ~ returned only in 1991, after a period of military dictatorship. Authoritarianism has pervaded democracy, since each of the two main parties denies the right of the other to rule, and the electoral victor takes all, including the opportunities this offers for corruption and self-enrichment. The BNP was born out of the cantonment under the leadership of General Ziaur Rahman in the chaos following the assassination of the first leader of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. His daughter, Sheikh Hasina, leads the Awami League. The Prime Minister of the outgoing BNP government is Khaleda Zia, widow of the murdered Zia. The recent government saw the rise of fundamentalist groups, responsible for killing Opposition politicians, journalists and activists of secular non-government organisations. Since the Jama'at- e-Islami was a partner of the BNP, it was widely believed that extremists of the Jamitul Mujahideen, operating with impunity in some parts of the country, were protected by influential politicians. Under pressure from the USA and Europe, the principal culprits were apprehended late in the BNP/Jama'at term of office which expired in October. Six terrorists were immediately arrested, tried and swiftly sentenced to death. Their execution is imminent. The Opposition fears the BNP, having distanced itself from its fundamentalist alliance, will now renew its ties with the military. This would be a homecoming, as it were, a return to the forces from which it originally sprang. As a Western ally in the war on terror, has the BNP deemed it prudent to dissociate itself from religious fundamentalists from whom it had derived such benefit? Does it see closeness to the army as its best chance of power? It was almost certain that the more secular Awami League would have won a fair election (despite having also allied itself with a dangerous fundamentalist party). The cleansing power of the military often proves less effective than advertised: evidence of its detachment from political strife will be seen in whether or not it cracks down on the group of corrupt businessmen surrounding the son of Khaleda Zia. There is, of course, an epic precedent for all this. Bangladesh was, until 1971, a province of Pakistan. The Jama'at fought against the independence of Bangladesh in the bloody war of 1971. It seemed during the past five years that militant Islam might become an agent of rapprochement between Bangladesh and the country against which it fought bitterly for its freedom. This now looks less plausible. It seems the task hesitantly entrusted to the religious parties has now devolved upon the army. And the model for this is not far to seek. General Pervez Musharraf came to power in Pakistan in a military coup, also a "temporary" arrangement, but lengthened indefinitely by his country's strategic importance in the US war on terror. Gen Musharraf has held together under military rule a country riven by warring factions ~ militant fundamentalists, secularists, modernisers and authoritarians. Some observers suggest the army generals behind the present fragile peace in Bangladesh may be the only force capable of holding together similar conflicting social forces in Bangladesh; will they "remove" both Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina, just as Gen Musharraf exiled Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, leaders of the two largest parties in Pakistan after his coup eight years ago? Many people insist Bangladesh is not Pakistan. But it was. And the dream has never died among certain sections of the people that it may be so again. Not formally, of course. There is no need for that ~ the trans-national entente of the military transcends the countries in whose name they seize power, as the Age of Military Dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s testified. Recent coups in Thailand and Fiji may make us wonder whether the military is not on the march again; and how long democracy will be deferred in a country that, in the last 40 years, has seen genocide, famine, flood, corruption, political violence, and of course, enduring, grinding, endless poverty. (The author lives in Britain. He has written plays for the stage, TV and radio, made TV documentaries, published more than 30 books and contributed to leading journals around the world. email:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
