— New Age
M Serajul Islam : WITH hardly a month left for the 12th national election and dates for submission and withdrawal of nomination gone, the Election Commission’s predicament could not have been any worse. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has boycotted the election and Jamaat-e-Islami’s registration has been cancelled. The Jatiya Party is not the third force of the 2014 election by any stretch of the imagination because it is fragmented and a ghost of its former self.
The national election that the commission is preparing will, therefore, be neither national nor participatory. Without the BNP and 62 other parties that will abstain, the commission will conduct the election for the Awami League candidates mainly. The other registered parties in the fray are insignificant. Additionally, these parties have been exposed and trademarked as lackeys and sycophants of the Awami League. They will, thus, embarrass the Awami League in an election that is shaping to become a national embarrassment and shame, if held.
The regime’s grand strategy to break the Bangladesh Nationalist Party by luring a good number of its leaders to join the so-called king’s parties such as the Trinamool BNP, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNM, et cetera, has boomeranged. Not even a handful of BNP leaders fell for the AL regime’s lures through the intelligence agencies. Those who succumbed have become Mir Jafars and have been declared undesirable in their constituencies. The regime has dropped them like hot potatoes, leaving them to rue for selling their souls for money.
The Awami League is now claiming that the United States, the west and the United Nations will do business with it as usual once the election is held. This is a wishful thinking. Bangladesh is extremely important for the Biden administration not for its politics but for human rights and democracy which are the bedrock of its Indo-Pacific Strategy. The Biden administration wants to unite the 36 nations in the Indo-Pacific region or a half of the world’s population, through democracy and human rights to contain China without the use of the military.
The Biden administration will, therefore, do all within its power for a free, fair and participatory general election in Bangladesh because of its importance to its all-important Indo-Pacific Strategy. The AL regime’s business-as-usual taunt will, therefore, only make the United States and its allies more determined against the AL regime’s intention to retain power forcibly with another undemocratic election accompanied by flagrant rights violations and denial of people’s inalienable right to vote freely and fairly.
The Biden administration made public on November 29 its ‘Country Report on Terrorism 2022: Bangladesh.’ The report implicated Bangladesh’s security forces in extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations in 2022. It also linked the Awami League directly to terrorism and violence with the ‘Chhatra League supporters acting in cahoots with the police and law enforcement agencies long before the EC announced the election schedule.’
The report blamed the Awami League for the attack on the chief justice’s residence on October 28 for which many top BNP leaders, including its secretary general, have been jailed and being denied bail. The report also accused the Awami League of plotting the October 28 violence to blame the Bangladesh Nationalist Party for cracking down on the party to pave the way for the one-party election that the Election Commission is now preparing for. The report further documented that the Awami League purchased ‘127 old buses’ that it subsequently burnt ‘to cook up evidence of BNP/Jamaat complicity in the arson and mayhem.’
The United Nations, meanwhile, also stated in New York on December 2 that it wants the next general election to be participated in by all the political parties after rejecting the commission’s offer to send observers for the January 7 election. The European Union also responded to the regime’s business-as-usual taunt by stating that the world wanted the Bangladesh election to be free and fair with the participation of all the political parties.
There will be no business as usual with the United States, in particular, also because of the mindless insults and utterances that the AL leaders have indulged since the Biden administration came to power and wanted a free, fair and peaceful election in Bangladesh. The Biden administration will have to be insane or treasures beyond imagination discovered buried in Bangladesh for the United States to do business as usual with Bangladesh without a free, fair, and participatory election.
The west, the United Nations with the United States taking the lead will start with economic sanctions if the Election Commission holds the election as it is planning. The Newspaper Owners Association of Bangladesh, or NOAB, met the country’s top economists with the fear of the economic sanctions hanging over Bangladesh like the sword of Damocles. The economists concluded unanimously that the sanctions ‘would have disastrous effects on the country’s economy already grappling with inflation, dollar shortage, depreciation of local currency and growing foreign loans.’
The same fear has also gripped the ministries that are seeking alternative destinations in the event the United States and its allies should impose the expected economic sanctions. The political leaders are, nevertheless, nonchalant perhaps because they have little else to do. The foreign minister stated that US buyers were free to buy from anywhere and, therefore, will ignore the sanctions. He knows better. The sanctions will remove the tariff concessions for Bangladesh’s apparel products leaving the US importers with zero incentive to buy from Bangladesh.
The next election will, therefore, be far worse than the 2014 election with dangerous consequences that did not accompany the 2014 election. The United States, the west and the United Nations will ensure both as they have the power to do so with the AL regime providing the reasons. The next general election will also be the antithesis to the spirit of 71 because it will trample democracy and human rights and deny people their constitutional right to vote freely and fairly.
The Election Commission will, however, find it extremely difficult to deliver the AL regime even with the absurd election that it is preparing for because of the mess it has already created. The commission’s nod to ‘dummy’ candidates to allow the regime to avoid another election like 2014 when there was no election in 153 seats has been a huge miscalculation. The 1,985 candidates who now remain in the election include many ‘dummy’ candidates who are AL members, including several members of the parliament. They will fight the 300 official AL candidates whose incumbency baggage will be formidable obstacles.
Therefore, in an irony of ironies, the AL regime may be tempted to interfere even in such an absurd election to save many AL candidates that will not be as easy as in the past because the next election will be held in real-time and watched by all and sundry. The dummy candidates will also land the AL allies in trouble. Parties of some such candidates are insignificant in number. They, nevertheless, backed the AL against the BNP-led opposition with their leadership qualities.
Conflicts and violence between the official and dummy AL candidates have started. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, on the back foot now because of state-sponsored oppression, is biding time but will come out eventually unless the US-led western powers which still have many cards in their hands besides the economic sanctions intervene. India which supported democracy and human rights and won all hearts in Bangladesh in 1971 is watching the present situation from the sidelines wondering why Bangladeshis rejoiced wildly at its World Cup defeat.
A ticket for the election with the Awami League’s nod in the past two elections was a guarantee of a seat in the parliament and other privileges of which the duty-free SUV was the player of the match award. The dummy candidates, the massive failure of the king’s party strategy, the fragmentation of the Jatiya Party, et cetera have already turned the next general election into a grand mess. The outcome of the election at this stage is anybody’s guess.
M Serajul Islam is a career ambassador.
New Age