Toying with the “state of chaos”

Sadeq Khan

The botched and hijacked city corporation elections were able to divert the mainstream opposition in the streets from street agitation to polls propaganda, but that is all it has achieved. The incumbent government and the Election Commission have lost credibility altogether and simply proved the point of the opposition alliance that free and fair election is not possible under a party government, reinforcing widespread public perception that restoration of the caretaker system is the only answer for participatory and credible elections that could lead to broad political consensus and stability badly needed for the country’s dynamics of development and job creation.

Indian commentators, who condone alleged acts of “state terror” by Sheikh Hasina as their prescription to contain Islamic extremism in Bangladesh and are wary of the BNP-Jamat compact leading the 20-party opposition alliance for their suspected Islamist links, did not fail to see the picture. A wishful way-out was prescribed by Anard Kumar of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis, a government-funded Indian Think Tank, whose observations is quoted below.

‘Robust EC needed’: Indian Think Tank
“Confrontational politics is not new in Bangladesh. But it seems to have intensified in the last few months, especially after the unofficial main opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), decided to launch protests on the first anniversary of the 2014 parliamentary elections in order to force the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government to step down. The BNP considers the January 5, 2014 parliamentary elections as illegal and hence the government in power as illegitimate. Since January 2015, Bangladesh has been facing continuous political turmoil which has cost the country at least 0.6 percent of its gross domestic product. It was hoped that the Mayoral elections in Dhaka and Chittagong that were held on 28 April 2015 and in which the BNP had decided to participate would resolve the ongoing political confrontation. Unfortunately, that did not happen and the BNP once again chose to boycott these elections a couple of hours after the polling had started.
“The BNP claims that it participated in the city polls to restore democracy but later boycotted them because of vote rigging. It further claims that vote rigging has shown that restoring democracy is not possible under the present government.
“The Election Commission has not come out with the voter turnout figure. But it is believed that voters came out in less numbers because an atmosphere of fear prevailed. This was particularly evident in the turnout of female voters.
“This round of Mayoral elections in Bangladesh has highlighted the need to strengthen democratic institutions such as the Election Commission. The country in recent times has moved away from the caretaker government system (CTG) and the EC is supposed to hold parliamentary and local elections in future. This would require a robust Election Commission that enjoys the confidence of all political parties.”

How London media sees it
A more sombre and incisive appraisal of the situation was given by Financial Times of London, under its Global Insight. It read: “For decades, warring Bangladeshi politicians have been able to rely on a safety valve when the pressure rises and an explosion of violence threatens the country’s stability. The solution takes the form of a neutral interim government, explicitly or implicitly backed by the armed forces, to oversee the next general election.
“Today, however, the safety valve in the south Asian nation of 160 million is broken just when it is needed the most. The incumbent Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina rejected an interim administration to run the election of January 2014 and then, after its inevitable victory at the polls, proceeded to co-opt the armed forces with money, land, construction contracts and other privileges.
“Former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s opposition Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) and its Jamaat-e-Islami allies — persecuted with particular savagery by the government for the past four months — have tried in vain to press for a new election by orchestrating violent strikes and street protests that have left schools closed, killed more than 100 and disrupted the garment export trade.
“‘Zia’s strategy is to bring in the army,’ says one leading Bangladeshi analyst who asks not to be named for fear of reprisals. ‘You ratchet up the level of violence to the extent that the army feels compelled to restore order. ‘Hasina, understanding that . . . is giving [the military], all sorts of toys — buying them MiGs or submarines and allocating cantonments [residential areas]. She is creating an appetite [within] the army that future governments will find very hard to feed. Nothing they are asking for is being denied.’

‘The state of chaos’
“Bangladesh is buying subsidised weapons from China and Russia and its annual defence budget has doubled in the past six years to more than $2bn, although official defence spending remains a fairly modest 1.4 per cent of gross domestic product.
The government says the 260,000-strong army has no interest staging a coup d’état and benefits from being the largest contributor to UN peacekeeping forces around the world.
“Like some of the BNP’s leaders, independent analysts have concluded that Ms Hasina has outwitted Ms Zia — at least for the time being — partly by co-opting every branch of the security forces from the main military intelligence agency to the Rapid Action Battalion, an elite anti-crime and anti-terror unit accused of atrocities against the opposition.
‘Effectively this is a military-backed Hasina government,’ says one Bangladeshi observer in Dhaka, the capital, noting recent grants of land for military housing and road contracts for a military-owned infrastructure company. The military even has its own bank, Trust Bank.
‘They [the government] have outsmarted the BNP. They have taken complete control of the military, not by using power but by sharing the money (unaccounted or by defalcation)?
The risks are obvious, according to another expert on Bangladeshi politics. ‘The military is getting used to these augmented privileges. This is absolutely dangerous for the sustaining of democracy in this country.”
Financial Times has only hinted at the inevitable result of failure of democracy that we may be heading to by mindlessly toying with “the state of chaos” (words of Matt Salmon, Chairman of US Congressional Subcommittee of Asia and the Pacific) into which Bangladesh has been thrown by coercive one-party rule.

Source: Weekly Holiday