Post-election Bangladesh sliding further into chaos

In the midst of deepening conflict between the incumbent Awami Leauge and the principal opposition,Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Bangladesh government went through as per its own plan and conducted the 10th general election on January 5, 2013.

Sunday was the culmination of almost two years’ long confrontations between the incumbent Awami League and the main opposition Party, BNP. The BNP refused to participate in the elections after the government had rejected its demand to put in place a non-partisan caretaker government to oversee the election process, which had been a law as well as a custom since 1996 general election, and was precisely seen as a protection against any possible manipulation of the government.

To understand the root cause of the political turmoil in Bangladesh, we need to revisit the history and comprehend the reasons behind the emergence of non-partisan caretaker government in Bangladesh, particularly during its election process. After the full restoration of democracy, Bangladesh saw its first multi-party general election in 1991, in which Bangladesh Nationalist Party had emerged victorious by bagging 140 seats out of total 300 and formed the government with its alliance partners.

In March 1994, there had emerged a controversy over a parliamentary by-election, which was alleged to have been rigged by the ruling BNP as claimed by the Awami League, the–then principal opposition. That had led to an indefinite boycott of Parliament by the entire opposition. The opposition had also initiated a program of repeated general strikes and blockades to press its demand for resignation of Khaleda Zia's government and putting in place a non-partisan caretaker government to supervise the next general election.

When the BNP rejected the opposition’s demand and held the sixth national parliamentary election in Bangladesh on 15 February, 1996, it was boycotted by most of the opposition parties. Consequently, with the turnout of the voters being as low as 21%, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party won all the 300 seats in parliament. Obviously, it was a one-sided victory.

In March 1996, following escalating political turmoil, the sitting Parliament enacted the 13th constitutional amendment, providing for a neutral caretaker government to assume power and conduct new parliamentary elections. Pursuant to this, the former Chief Justice, Muhammad Habibur Rahman, was appointed as Chief Advisor (a position equivalent to prime minister) in the interim government. Thereafter, fresh parliamentary elections were held in June 1996, and which were won by the Awami League.

Incongruously, in 2011 the ruling Awami Leauge government repealed the 13th constitutional amendment which had been enacted in 1996 by its own tremendous efforts. Circumventing the caretaker system for the 2014 election looks plainly self-serving on the part of the ruling Awami Leauge. A recent opinion poll shows nearly four out of five Bangladeshis think it a bad idea.

The largely unchallenged elections in Bangladesh have proved the opposition’s point that the majority of people do not want elections to be conducted under the ruling Awami League government

Local English daily, Dhaka Tribune had published a survey 3 days before the scheduled election. According to the poll, 77% of the 2438 respondents opined that an election without participation of BNP,the main opposition party, was not acceptable; 71% said the country was heading in a wrong direction; majority of the respondents was against the government’s ban on Jamaat-e-Islami.

Though the Election Commission hasn't so far announced the results officially, according to Dhaka Tribune reports, PM Sheikh Hasina's Awami League has bagged 105 seats out of 147 that were contested. While its ally, Jatiya Party, has notched 13 seats. Other parties and independent candidates have grabbed a total of 19 seats. As per the report, the Election Commission has ordered re-polling on 400 booths in 8 constituencies.

The Election Working Group (EWG), a non-partisan network of 29 leading civil society organisations that observed the 10th parliamentary polls in a limited capacity, claimed that 30.1% of the electorate voted on Sunday. The turnout was significantly lower than that in the previous two parliamentary polls. In 2008, the turnout was 85.93%, while it was 74.37% in 2001.

The EWG had deployed 8,444 observers at 1,689 polling centres in 75 constituencies in 43 out of 59 districts where elections were held. The turnout of female voters was 31.2%, while the male voter turnout was 28.9%, the report says.The voter turnout varied across constituencies, with Dhaka 17 (Banani-Gulshan) recording the lowest, 6.4%, while Gopalganj, the highest with 74%.

With the complete boycott by the opposition, a very low turn-out, and the absence of international election observers, the result of the election is expected to remain implausible as the entire election process has been. It is worth mentioning here that the European Union, the United States, Russia and the Commonwealth Nations have declined to send polls observers for Sunday's election. Interestingly, Only India and Bhutan had sent their poll observers to monitor the election.

The 48-hour countrywide hartal (strike) enforced by the BNP-led 18-party alliance was called off on Tuesday. It is expected that the BNP-led opposition alliance will persist with the fresh programme of strikes and blockades, demanding cancellation of polls’ results and protesting against the continued killing of their cadres.

In the post-election press conference, the Prime Minister, Shiekh Hasina, put forward her views as thus: “I call upon even now. Leave the company of the Jamaat-e-Islami and reach for a dialogue,” she said, indicting the BNP: “But, terrorism has to be put aside and the virtue of patience must be displayed.”

Most ironically, the same Awami League had forged an electoral understanding with the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1996 to win the election against its arch rival, BNP.

Last year, the High Court banned Jamaat-e-Islami to take part in the election, and many of its leaders were sentenced to death and aggravated life sentences by the War crime tribunal for allegedly siding with Pakistan in the Bangladesh liberation war.

Another leading daily in Bangladesh, the Daily Star, writes: “it would also be unfair, and indeed unwise to draw a broad brush of ‘anti-liberation or anti-democratic’ on all those who did not participate in the election. We do not believe that nearly 70 percent who chose not to vote are anti-liberation.”

The Daily Star holds the Prime Minister responsible for the present deadlock. It writes further: “The PM is not in sync with the existing political reality. Given her position that this election was a constitutional compulsion, we need to emphasize that it will not by any means resolve the current political instability. It was thus disappointing that the substance and tenor of her comments lacked any direction to resolve the political flux.”

History is thus repeating itself in Bangladesh; today, BNP is fighting for the same cause against Awami League which the latter had fought 14 years ago and won the election. Interestingly, one thing is common between 1996 and 2014; on both the junctures, the beleaguered Jamat-e-Islami was on the side of opposition to boycott the undemocratic elections.

It’s the political immaturity of both the major political parties in Bangladesh that has pushed the country into extreme instability. The lust for power and privilege, the vendetta politics, and fear of defeat have virtually destroyed the democratic prospects of Bangladeshi politics. Ultimately, the losers of such political wrangling are neither the battling Begums, nor the political parties, but the common men of the country.

The only solution of the political imbroglio is a fresh and all- inclusive election under the neutral care-taker government with wider democratic participation. In the absence of what is perceived to be a fair and representative government in Dhaka, Bangladesh will continue sliding into political violence and anarchy.

“Not only this, the country's already shattered economy is bound to deteriorate further. The responsibility for the debacle of the system will squarely lie on the political parties, particularly the ruling party. "

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Bangladesh’s undemocratic election and growing turmoil

The Bangladesh Government has decided to go ahead with the upcoming Parliamentary elections. The Election Commission will arrange voting in 146 constituencies out of total 300 on January 5, as the rest of the 154 constituencies got single candidates across the country.

The proposed January 5, 2014 elections will be a mockery of democracy where the entire opposition has refused to take part in the process of electioneering and, in this case, if elections take place in the remaining 146 seats, it is obvious that most of the seats would also be grabbed by the ruling Awami Leauge (AL) and its allies.

The incumbent Awami Leauge Government has completed its five year term on October 28, 2013. According to law and practice, the Awami Leauge Government resign on and before that date and a non partisan, caretaker government takes over and conducts the free and fair elections. However, that did not happen on October 28 last year. The opposition alliance, led by the main opposition leader and former PM Khaleda Zia of the BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) and its beleaguered ally BJI (Bangladesh Jatiya Party), with other alliance partners, are on the streets protesting the continuation of PM Sheikh Hasina’s cabinet after completing the tenure.

The upcoming elections, without the nonpartisan caretaker government, will exacerbate the tensions. In the past, a nonpartisan caretaker government has operated during elections. Its presence has ensured consistent and peaceful governance, but the ruling Awami League eliminated the requirement for a caretaker government in 2011. The opposition BNP- led alliance has been vociferously opposing this move since then.

The Election Commission of Bangladesh declared 154 legislators, mostly from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s AL-led coalition, unopposed in their respective constituencies. The parliament has 300 directly elected seats. The remaining 50 seats, which are reserved for women, are allocated to the political parties according to their proportional representation.

Incumbent Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and former Prime Minister and leader of the opposition Khaleda Zia - known as the battling begums – are known to have a bitter rivalry and do not see eye-to-eye. In November last year, Khaleda Zia rejected an offer by PM Shaikh Hasina to join an all-party administration to oversee the polls; instead she called for street protests against the elections without the caretaker government. More than 500 people were killed across the country in political violence in 2013.

An UN-mediated dialogue between the two major parties failed to resolve the deadlock over the election arrangements. The opposition is demanding the restoration of a non-partisan caretaker administration to oversee elections, a system that Hasina scrapped in 2011.

From the Political Party of Opposition alliance, the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami was banned by country’s High Court on August 1, 2013, which also canceled the BJI’s political registration, preventing the party from taking part in the electioneering process of the country. This means that the BJI is ineligible to take part in forthcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for early 2014.

In a controversial decision, the three-judge bench of the High Court, headed by Chief Justice Moazzem Hossain, ruled that the party's charter, by acknowledging the absolute power of God, breached Bangladesh's 1972 secular constitution, which upholds the sovereignty and absolute power of the people of Bangladesh. Although in the 1979 general elections the-then BJI fought the election under the banner of the ‘Islamic Democratic League’, this election was different, where BJI is cornered and leaderless.

So far, 9 leaders of the BJI and 2 BNP leaders have been indicted in the War Crime Trials by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), out of which 6 defendants have already been convicted with death sentences and 1 with aggravated life-imprisonment.

In a pre-election make-up, by ignoring all pleas of rationale from national and international human rights organizations such as the Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and international bodies such as the United Nations itself, including calls from major countries and their heads of state, Abdul Quader Mollah was executed by the government on the 12th of December 2013.

Sentences of war crime trials and the latter execution of Mollah have bitterly divided the nation and it has become a big electoral issue in the country, where government supporters are asking for the early implementation of sentences on the other political opposition and human rights organizations that are crying foul-play on the validity of the ICT.

It is pertinent to say here that in Bangladesh the undemocratic tendencies of the AL government will only make the political scene of the country more venomous. The daily killings of opposition protestors, both by security forces and by AL supporters, is unabatedly continuing. Opposition led Hartals and Bandhs (strikes and lockdowns) have paralyzed the social and economic life of this South Asian nation of 160 million people. The political turmoil has made the life of already poor Bangladeshi people more miserable. Political analysts say the deadlock may linger for a long time as none of the parties are willing to give ground.

"A national government could be an answer to the current political standoff in Bangladesh," said Manzoor Hasan, of the Institute of Government Studies at Brac University, but expressed doubt about whether anyone would be prepared to make the first move.

"Either the Awami League or the Bangladesh Nationalist Party wins elections in Bangladesh, but still the people are the losers," he said.

As reported by Bangladesh’s leading English Newspaper Daily Star, it was reported on 29 December 2013 that prominent civil society members called on the government to defer the January 5 parliamentary election to make it participatory and credible.

“Civil society think-tank Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), legal aid organization Ain O Salish Kendra, civic movement for good governance Sujan and Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) jointly organised the discussion on “Bangladesh in Crisis”.

Since the restoration of full democracy in the 1990s, Bangladesh has swapped ruling parties in every general election: BNP ruled the country from 1991-1996 and 2001–2006, AL ruled from 1996-2001 and from 2008 till the approaching general elections scheduled to take place on January 5, 2014 . The conventional wisdom suggests that in the coming parliamentary elections, BNP-led alliance will be victorious with a thumping majority.

In Bangladesh, no ruling party has ever won a second time. Many political pundits believe that the incumbent Prime Minster Shiekh Hasina knows her imminent defeat in the upcoming election and she is resorting to undemocratic means to stick to power.

Suffice it say here that the upcoming elections without the participation of the opposition alliance will not be able to provide any kind of political stability to Bangladesh, the country looks likely to further plunge into political violence and anarchy.

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Erdogan, Gulen feud and emerging trends in Turkish Politics

The self exiled Turkish scholar and preacher Fetullah Gulen, called Hocaefendi (Respected Master) by his followers, is now in a direct clash with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Supporters of both of these men are now in open political warfare.

During the 12 years of Erdogan’sAK Party rule, the Turkish power structure has been cleansed and reshaped. The Western looking power of the Kemalist has waned, the judiciary purged and the military circumscribed.These dominant power centers of Turkey’s deep state were controlled and contained under the civilian rule of the Prime Minister Erdogan. But this period of the ascendancy of Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AK Party), also witnessed the rapid rise in power and influence throughout the country of Gulen’s Hizmet movement.

Hizmet was for the most part funded by a network of private schools and tutoring centers (Dershanelers) throughout Turkey. These ostensibly also acted as a support base for the movement’s charismatic leader, (Gulen) who lives in Pennsylvania in the United States.

According to analysts, Erdogan and his top policy makers decided to shut tutoring centers down, which was and is an existential threat to Gulen. He in turn retaliated by orchestrating, (through Hizmet’s network within the police and judiciary) a series of  “corruption” investigations aimed at discrediting Erdoğan and his AK Party. They specifically targeted businessmen, a banker and few important members of Erdoğan’s Cabinet.

Many observers believe that this firestorm has been building up for the last three years, at least since the Mavi Marmara incident. At that time Gulen gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal criticizing in general, the AK Party backed “charity”Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) and Erdogan’s government specifically, for the Marvi Marmara flotilla aimed at breaking the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza.

Pro- Government media outlets saw a “foreign hand” involved in whatshould have only been internal differences relative to Turkish national policies. They went on to blame the Gulen Movement for fermenting the Gezianti government protests in May of last year as well. The fight between Erdogan and Gulen Movement turned really ugly however, when former believed that the latter used his people within the Turkish judiciary to try and get rid of the pro Erdoğan MIT chief HakanFidan.

Gulen’s Hizmet movement is very strong in many Turkish state institutions such as the Police, Judiciary, State Media (TRT), Ministry of Education, etc.

It is worth mentioning that Prime Minister Erdogan and some of his close associates in AK Party come from the MilliGörüş, (National  Outlook Movement) of NecmettinErbakan, the former Prime Minister and late leader of the now  defunct Refah Partisi, (Welfare Party). That movement was Islamic conservative and loosely speaking, a counterpart of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and similar groups.

Gülen’s movement on the other hand has been pro-West and strongly free market-oriented. His democratic credentials however, have been questioned, given his strongly pro-state position on the Kurdish issue, the military Interventions of 1980 and 1997, and other issues as well.So, for the Erdogan this was condensed into a demand for a rigidly Islamic state, while Gulen wants to uphold the existing Turkish state with its semi-democratic, somewhat secular structure.

As reported by Hurriyet Daily News, on December 21st Gulen mounted an unprecedented attack on the government, accusing it of, in effect covering up corruption allegations, by instead going after the police who were honestly trying to investigate them.Gulen cursed the AK Party and Erdoğan in a video message to his followers that was shown on Turkish TV saying; “Those who don’t see the thief but go after those who chase the thief ... May Allah bring fire to their homes,”

Before his December 22nd trip to Pakistan, Erdogan shot back, (relative to Gulen’s “curse”) saying “We pray for Muslims to reach the right Way, not for their damnation. Cursing is such a trick among Muslims. It  will return to one who did this like a boomerang,”

The upcoming elections in Turkey are going to be crucial. If the AK Party can repeat its past performance and get around 50% of the vote it will no longer need Gulen. On the other hand if AK Party drops under 45 percent, it will spell trouble for Erdoğan.A small drop in votes would mean Erdoğancan live without Gulen, Gulen Movement’s supporters’ estimate there popular support to be around 15% of potential voters. To compensate for expected Gulen Movement losses, Erdoğan is banking on increased Kurdish support from his recent outreaches to the Kurdish population.

Several AK Party parliamentarians have resigned since the beginning of the GulenMovement owned prep school closing controversy. That includes the recent resignation of the founding member of the AK Party, the former interior Minister Idris NaimSahin. More resignation are expected in coming days and weeks. It remains to be seen whether these resignations will change the internal structure of the AK Party, as it could break into two factions. One faction being Pro- Erdogan Islamic conservativesand the other Anti-Erdoğan Islamic liberal.How will all of this shake out relative to Erdoğan’s reelection hopes? We will learn soon enough through the ballot box and the voice of the Turkish people.

One thing seems certain however, the struggle between the Turkish MB-inspired AK Party, (the successor of Milli Gorus and pan-Islamic) and the Pro-Western Gulen-inspired Turkish Islamic is not going to go in favor of the Kemalists.

This Gulen- Erdogan rift will revolve around the level of American influence on Conservative Islamic democratic Politics and its direction and focus in the medium term. Fethullah Gulen, directs his movement from the United States. So the US ostensibly retains greater "control" over it than it does over the MB considerate AK Party.The relationship between the Anglo-Saxons and the Turkish Gulen movement type Islamicmovement is far greater than the trust the West is ready to invest in other Islamic socio political movements.

Turkish Islamic conservatives who are not inspired by Gulen, may and do take up causes that create some discomfort to the United States and its allies in the region. Examples of that were Erdoğan’s vehement opposition to the Egypt’s coup, his support of the Gaza Flotilla, and his opting for a Chinese air defense system.

The Turkish pan-Islamic conservatives such as Erdoğan appeal to the Arab/ Muslim street, while the Gulen Movement appeals to Western capitals, as a white face of Islamic Politics that they can do business with. There is no way that in this struggle Kemalists are going to come out to be winners. The Gulen Movement will end up replacing this Western-friendly model in the public mind with a shade of Islamism only somewhat different to the one that the AK Party and Erdoğan will favor.

Suffice it to say here that the real struggle will be between Turkey as a fully independent country capable of making its own decisions, or one that will first and foremost need to take the interests of the West into consideration before making decisions on international and even national issues."

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