The emerging political landscape

Who are the main players and how are they maneuvering?

It’s been a month since the parliament that was ‘elected’ on 7 January was dissolved. According to the constitution, a new parliament needs to be elected by 4 November. This will almost certainly not happen. The interim administration has said that it intends to honor the people’s aspirations —as expressed through the Monsoon Revolution —for constitutional and institutional reforms. In practice, this seems to mean the administration will facilitate some form of accord among the key political parties on reforms that would be enacted by the elected parliament. Of course, details of any of this remain to be worked out, and it is far too early to predict how things will play out.

It is, however, a useful exercise to take stock of the current and emerging political landscape. And that’s what is attempted in this obviously subjective post.

It is natural to begin with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Belying the numerous political obituaries penned by pundits since its inception 46 years ago, BNP is now widely considered to be the government-in-waiting. But its path to power is neither guaranteed nor smooth.

On the plus side, it is easily the largest political party and therefore should win any election. However, that widely expected result is also complicating matters. Like in any developing (and indeed, many developed) country, politics at the local, grassroot level is much about patronage and influence. The vacuum created at the local level by the sudden fall of the Hasina regime is being filled by the BNP grassroots. Often pooh-poohed as dakhal by the national elite discourse, changes in thousands of committees, societies and associations running bazaars, mosques, transport hubs and so on across the country reflect how the society in fact functions in Bangladesh.

All that said, there is no denying that different factions of the party engaging in violent conflict over the control of patronage network in the semi-urban hinterland makes for a very bad image for the party. BNP leadership —a de facto troika of Tarique Rahman, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, and Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury —seems to be aware of this problem. It has asked for explanations from senior leaders, expelled several members, and even handed a few individuals over to the police.

Meanwhile, it has also formally proposed a couple of constitutional reforms —an upper house in the legislature and term limits. More importantly, knowing that it can push for an election at any time, it does not seem to be in a rush, preferring to regroup, recruit, and prepare for the return of its exiled acting chairperson.

In contrast to BNP’s cautious approach, Jamaat-e-Islami and other Islamist groups seem to provide an example of how to count one’s eggs before they are hatched. Whether it is the fact that the army chief name checked Jamaat and Hefazot leaders in his press conference on 5 August, the incessant Indian propaganda about an Islamist takeover of Bangladesh, or the visible increase in religious rituals and markers in Bangladesh —a widely prevailing view among the chatterati and the cognoscenti hold that Islamists are on the precipice of major electoral gains.

Two arguments are usually provided for this view. First, Islamists were particularly repressed by the Hasina regime, and therefore garners sympathy. And second, since they were never in power, there is an element of ‘let’s give them a shot’, which is in sharp contrast to BNP with its record in power that are obviously open to criticism.

There are, however, reasons for skepticism about the Islamists’ political strength. Firstly, against the backdrop of the aspirations of constitutional and institutional reforms, Islamists have so far offered little other than old culture war tropes around the national anthem and possibly the flag. Forget the fact that these issues may not have the same salience among the general populace as in some corners of social media. Even among Islamists, there is far more consensus on what they are against than what they are for!

While Jamaat has been trying to form a broad alliance of Islamist parties, their chances of success must be benchmarked against the fact that the last time various ulemas, pirs, and mullahs of the subcontinent were united for a political cause was during the first war of independence in 1857 against the Company Raj. Various Islamist groups in the subcontinent are extremely factionalized, consumed with their sectarian and theological disputes. Will they be able to maintain a political alliance in Bangladesh to make it big in the next election?

Further, globally Islamism is very much a movement of the past. The failure of Islamist parties to govern any major country through democratic means gives lie to the slogan ‘Islam is the solution’. In Turkey, a very moderate Islamist party has evolved into a strongman government over the past two decades. Islamists have failed to govern anywhere after the Arab Spring. And in the democracies of monsoon Asia, they are never more than a large minor party —the role Jamaat played in Bangladesh when we had elections. Against the global trend, Bangladeshi Islamists will make significant electoral gains —color me the skeptical shade of green!

If the Islamists’ prospects are overrated, perceptions around the Awami League’s future prospects are perhaps underrated.

It is easy to consign Awami League to the dust bin of history. The party organization had decayed over the past decade as Hasina relied on brute force of law enforcement agencies and politicized judiciary to rule through censorship, torture, abduction and murder. And then she fled. It is hard to come back from here.

And indeed, if there were an election right now, it probably would be hard for the party to mount a public campaign outside its core constituencies in a few seats. But will that be the case in a year’s time?

Let us consider some numbers.

The Awami League polled around a quarter of votes in 1979 election. Could that be the party’s floor? Even if the party is unable to organize and contest under its own name or symbol, these voters represent a constituency, and what will stop individuals from running as independents to cater to them?

Jamaat’s highest point in electoral terms was 12 percent in 1991. Even if they were to pull off a miracle and sustain an Islamist alliance, could they do better than to double it? That is, perhaps a quarter of votes is their ceiling.

And these half of voters are likely to be concentrated in rural seats in south Bengal and greater Sylhet for the Awami League (or whatever banner their candidates run) and North Bengal and parts of Chittagong for Jamaat (and its Islamist allies).

What about the other half of voters, spread across the rest of the country?

BNP has consistently attracted between 30 and 40 percent of votes in the parliamentary elections it contested (Ziaur Rahman and Abdus Sattar received much more in presidential elections). Considering that both AL and Islamist votes would be regionally concentrated, whereas BNP has nationwide organization and support, it could quite easily win a thumping majority with even a third of votes —and that is perhaps understating BNP’s support.

Ah, but what about the young revolutionaries?

They indeed are the wild card. While BNP (and Islamists, as well as various leftist and civil society activists and dissidents) resisted Hasina’s despotism over the past 15 years, the regime fell because of a youthquake. As such, it is natural to expect that they will flex their political prowess and transform themselves into a political party. And the signs are that they will.

In the co-ordinators, they have people with political acumen, organizational ability, and local as well as national recognition. They have an incredible political narrative in the Monsoon Revolution. Successful political parties are built on far less!

And yet, they face two considerable challenges. First, electoral politics is extremely local. There are 300 seats, each with hundred odd polling centers, and hundred odd foot soldiers are needed to win each of these —you do the math and it looks pretty daunting indeed to set up a party! This is fundamentally the reason all ‘third party’ initiatives from Kamal Hossain in the early 1990s to Reza Kibria and Nurul Haq a few years ago failed.

Having a charismatic leader at the helm could somewhat mitigate this difficulty. But the Monsoon Revolution had no such persona —a unique event in our history!

However, one can imagine murubbi figures like Pinaki Bhattacharya, Mahmudur Rahman and Asif Nazrul providing a sort of brand power in a scenario where various young revolutionaries are raising their profile in the administration during the interim period while others are organizing the new party. If they can pull it off, such a party will cover the same ideological space of moderation and capable governance that is BNP’s natural forte.

That could make for a very exciting political landscape.

But a lot of things will have to happen for that to come to pass. The tentative assessment one month after the revolution is one where the more likely outcome is a BNP brute majority.

It is hard to imagine anyone having Hasina’s personality traits, so any worry about such brute majority devolving into despotism might not be warranted. But in Bangladesh, absolute power tends to bring supreme irresponsibility. And to paraphrase American statesman James Madison, institutions should be set up assuming the devil will rule, because we wouldn’t need rules if angels were in power.

This is ultimately why a general accord on constitutional and institutional reforms are needed before we can have an election.

A slightly different version was first published in Nuraldeen.

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