The end of the beginning

Will politics return to Bangladesh in near future?

Dec 25, 2022

The Saturday before Donald Trump’s election in 2016, I confidently told a friend that there was nothing interesting about a Democrat landslide. And on the even of the 2008 Bangladeshi election, in a live blog with Asif Saleh and Nazim Farhan Chowdhury, I said a BNP comeback wouldn’t be surprising. The point, dear reader, is that when it comes to political analysis, my form is worse than it is on football.

And yet, a newsletter purporting to be about liberalism in Bangladesh cannot but try to make sense of recent political developments. What follows is an attempt to do so, and should be read with the above caveat in mind.

Over the past few months, against the backdrop of a worsening economy, Bangladesh Nationalist Party has been organising a series of meetings and rallies across the country. The Dhaka regime tried to thwart these meetings with administrative efforts, and failing that, using brute force, killing several. The latest of these meetings were in the capital on 10 December. Ahead of that meeting, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir — the party’s seniormost leader still active in Bangladesh (the chairperson, Mrs Khaleda Zia is seriously ill, and the next-in-line, Tarique Rahman, is in exile) — was arrested. In spite of all the hurdles, the meetings have been attended by numbers unseen in many years. More information is available at the links below.

Abstracting from the heavy handed response from the regime, the thing to note is that a series of meetings and rallies across the country in the winter 12 months or so out from an election is how politics used to happen in Bangladesh just a decade ago.

Let’s think about the winter of 2012-13. Then too an election was expected in the following winter. Throughout the winter, Mrs Zia criss-crossed the country with tales of misgovernance by the regime and promises of deliverance. Similarly, in the winter of 2005-06, Awami League held rallies and meetings with long lists grievances against Mrs Zia. These meetings energised the party organisations across the country. These were to exercise the parties’ muscles — metaphorically, but also literally.

Similar meetings were ‘just politics’ back then. So what’s the big deal now?

The big deal, of course, is that electoral and party politics of that sort had effectively ended in Bangladesh in 2013-14. The opposition coalition couldn’t organise similar meetings in 2017-18, and therfore failed to prevent the blatant regging in 2018.

The regime clearly does not want electoral politics to return under any circumstances, let alone one during a time of inflation and panics around banks — hence the crackdowns.

As we head to 2023, will we see a return of old style politics? Or will the regime prevail, even if the old-style politics returns, like it did in 2012=13?

I haven’t the faintest clue! But in a number of ways, things are very different now than was the case a decade ago. First, of course, is the economy — this is well understood and need not be elaborated on here. Second, the geopolitical context is very different now, and this may have implications.

The geopolitical context in 2012-13, at least as far as Bangladesh was concerned, was one of the United States retreading from its neocon overreach while its allies, India and China shared a common aim of stability in the country. There was a general consensus in the relevant capitals that the threat to stability came from radical and militant Islamist politcs. The regime of Hasina Wajed sold itself as the best defence against that threat, and the west turned a blind eye to the erosion of democracy.

The geopolitical context now is one of great power rivalry between the US and China, with a regional Sino-Indian twist. This does not, however, mean the powers cannot share a common goal. In fact, the goal with respect to Bangladesh remains the same — stability. The biggest threat to stability now, however, is the economy in general and the banks in particular.

The technical solutions to the economic woes are, in a way, textbook stuff: adjust the interest and exchange rates, merge the troubled banks, let the defaulters go into bankruptcy and so on. The reason the regime is baulking at these is entirely political — the money taken from these banks will be needed to rig the 2023 election, that’s thecrux of it, the rest is just details.

Why can’t the regime rely on the security agencies and the state machinery like it did in 2018? There might be two reasons. First, the security agencies might not not feel as reckless as in the past about human rights violation given the spectre of sanctions. And second, they might not feel loyal to the regime in the absence of four fold payrises they received in the lead up to the last election — a country seeking IMF fiscal package can’t afford such largesse.

So the regime needs its cronies and their money — it’s exactly like in those Hollywood-Bollywood movies.

Of course, the cost of rigging is not fixed. The stronger the opposition — not just more popular, but also better organised — the larger the cost. The opposition’s strength, in turn, is partly related to the economy. The worse the economy, the more popular the opposition. To wit, note the class composition of those attending BNP rallies (and facing the regime’s bullets and jackboots): small traders and urban workers who suffer the most during rising inflation and economic slowdown.

That is, the regime has a pickle: it can’t fix the economy because that will risk its ability to manage the election, but if it does nothing, the economy worsens, making it harder for the regime politically.

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This does not, however, mean an imminent return of electoral politics in any form, let alone a BNP government any time soon.

In the old style politics, these meetings and rallies would be followed in the year leading up to the election with an ever increasing crescendo of hartals-abarodhs, punctuated by local elections. Even in 2013, the circus of Shahbag and Shapla Chattar notwithstanding, BNP won four city council elections in a landslide. In 2006, Awami League shut Dhaka down with the logi-boitha violence. These were not pointless exercises. They were crucial ways of political organisation at the grass roots level. They signalled to the voters which candidates, if elected, would be capable enough to look after their interests. And they signalled to the civil-military bureaucracy that the opposition had the momentum, and thus it would be in their interest to avoid rigging the election for the incumbent.

None of this is likely in 2023. It is hard to imagine that BNP will participate in local elections in 2023. And it is harder to imagine a return to violent politics. In fact, political violence of any sort would give the regime a massive propaganda tool.

So, the return to old politics is not likely. Nor is it likely to be effective, and therefore is not desirable.

How about return to a much older tradition of politics?

There is a certain moral dignity to Mr Alamgir that reminds one of Pundit Nehru or Maolana Azad in the 1920s — Shafiqul Alam has written about this recently. I have no idea whether that kind of politics is suitable for BNP, or Bangladesh more broadly for that matter.

I guess we will find out.

What is clear, however, is that BNP is not at all interested in a ‘return to 2012’. Yes, of course, it wants a free and fair election. But it has stated clearly the preconditions for such an election: a non-partisan caretaker or interim government. And much more importantly, there is a clear articulation that a free and fair election is necessary but not sufficient for a democratic Bangladesh.

Its 10-point demands spell out what the party wants to see happen: election and related matters, of course; but also redressing the human rights abuses committed by the regime — enforced disappearances, extra judicial killings and so on — as well as lifting curbs on media freedoms, investigation of attacks on the minorities, and so on; and economic measures such as financial sector reforms. Since BNP clearly does not expect the current regime to do any of these — the first demand being the resignation of Mrs Hasina Wajed — it is reasonable to assume that the interim regime will need to begin these matters. And that would make the interim regime quite different from those managing the 1991, 1996, and 2001 elections.

The party goes further with its 27-point reform framework, which spell out a broad range of areas, from legislature to public health, that require attention. Interestingly, these points are neither ‘demands’ — asking the current regime or its replacement to do these — nor ‘promises’ — what the party commits to do if it is in power. They are reform proposals that are to be deliberated upon, with appropriate actions left for a post-election national government.

That is, the party is making it very clear that this is not a return to ‘throw that lot out and put us in power’.

In 2012-13, many of my Dhaka friends used to hide their political sympathies for Awami League with a refrain of ‘both parties are bad, we have no alternative, at least these guys are not mullahs, why risk change’. That sounded hollow even then. I doubt anyone can say such stuff with a straight face anymore. Of course, I am usually wrong about stuff like this.

Regardless, anyone serious about a democratic Bangladesh should be discussing and debating BNP’s 27-points — there is much that can be improved upon when the time comes. Let now be the end of the beginning.

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The English language readership in Bangladesh is much larger than was the case a decade ago, the media landscape is very different, and changing personal circumstances mean I am able to write about stuff now that I couldn’t then. One implication, however, is that much of the newsletter’s readership is unfamiliar with stances I had taken then. It is important to rectify this, if nothing else, to build an honest partnership with the readers. With that in mind, I will link some of the old material occasionally. The first of this, published and widely circulated in December 2013, is below: