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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