Can Bangladesh keep democratic?

 

BANGLADESH HAS BEGUN the first annual celebration of its struggle for the restoration of democracy.

 

A student-led movement during last July and August overthrew Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, ending her 16-year-long repressive autocracy and ushering in the interim government of the Nobel laureate Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus.

 

Opening the celebrations, Professor Yunus called on Bangladeshis to remain vigilant so “autocracy can’t raise its ugly head again.”

 

At a separate event, Syed Abdullah Muhammad Taher, deputy leader (naeb-e amir) of the Jamaat-e Islami party, echoed Yunus’s call but warned the celebrants to watch out so “the BNP doesn’t restart looting” after coming to power again.

 

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP, had been accused of engaging in corruption under Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s 2001-2006 regime. Her son, Tarique Rahman, was blamed for embezzlement and other criminal activities through what was known as “Hawa Bhavan” schemes.

 

The BNP and the Jamaat had been allies in previous governments. In December 2003, Martiur Rahman Nizami, then Jamaat chief and industries minister in a BNP-led government, told me at his Shilpa Bhavan office in Dhaka that his party’s alliance with the BNP was “an alliance of values.”  He meant Islamic values because the two right-of-center parties were pitted against the staunchly secular, pro-Indian Awami League party.

 

(Nizami would later be executed by the Hasina government on seemingly trumped-up charges of sedition and crimes against humanity.)

 

The BNP and the Jamaat are now the largest political parties in Bangladesh, and their old rival, the Awami League, is in the political wilderness. Having no other rivals, the two parties are gearing up to fight against each other in the next parliamentary elections, which are expected to be held early next year. Jamaat leader Muhamad Taher’s dig at the BNP appears to be a preview of their upcoming election campaigns.

 

Holding elections isn’t the biggest challenge facing Bangladesh, however. Establishing Democracy is.

 

The Bangladesh independence movement began in the late 1960s as a struggle to restore democracy in old Pakistan, of which Bangladesh was a province. Nearly a dozen parliamentary elections have been held during Bangladesh’s 54-year-long history, and yet democracy has eluded the country.

 

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman launched the Bangladesh independence struggle in East Pakistan and became the founder of independent Bangladesh. He was elected the country’s first prime minister, but transformed himself into a brutal dictator, ruling the country under a one-party government. Having assassinated democracy, Mujib himself fell victim to assassins’ bullets in August 1975.

 

The BNP was launched by one of Mujib’s successors, Maj. Gen. Ziaur Rahman, after he had grabbed power through an army coup d’état. President Zia ruled Bangladesh with an iron fist. In August 1978, I asked his titular prime minister, Shah Azizur Rahman, in Dhaka about “the status of democracy” under his boss’s civilian government.

 

“It takes a while,” replied the old stalwart of the Pakistan movement.

 

Zia’s civilian government followed an election, and after an interlude of another military dictatorship, elections were restored in 1991, returning the BNP to power, followed by a string of Awami League governments under Hasina.  All elections held under Hasina were rigged.

 

The student-led upheaval that toppled Hasina and drove her into India last Aug. 5 was an outburst of Bangladeshis’ pent-up outrage at her and her Awami League, who had not only unleashed wanton tyranny but relegated all levels of society into their servitude.

 

In July 2022, I was waiting for my turn to see a physician at his private chamber in Sylhet town, where I live. Suddenly, the doctor’s assistant dropped her phone and told him that the vice president of the town’s Awami League branch had arrived for a visit with the doctor.

 

Did he have an appointment? I asked the assistant. She nodded no.

 

The doctor ordered us to wait until the Awami League bigwig was served. As the mighty visitor lumbered through the waiting room, everybody – except me – rose in veneration. The man incinerated me with his blazing gaze before entering the doctor’s chamber.

 

Bangladeshis are waiting impatiently to see democracy restored once again to their country. The challenge they face will be to build a democratic culture and keep up their vigilance against the forays of future autocrats.

 

In 1787, a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia adopted the American Constitution. Having got the document approved by delegates, Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s founding fathers, stepped out into the street.

 

“Is it a monarchy or a republic, doctor?” a woman asked the sage, who was commonly called “doctor,” even though he didn’t have a doctorate or a medical degree.

 

“A republic, madam,” Franklin replied, “if you can keep it.”

 

Muhammad Yunus and his interim government are striving to have democracy restored in Bangladesh. It will be up to the Bangladeshis to keep it.

 

~Mustafa Malik, the host of the blog ‘mustafamalik.com,’  worked for more than three decades as a reporter, editor and columnist for American newspapers and as a researcher for American think tanks.