Why Bangladesh still a child even at 54

Election-oriented people believe that once an election is held inflation will fall, GDP will rise, a flood of investment will come, factories will not close, there will be no shortage of gas supply, electricity prices will fall, load-shedding will end, there will be no traffic jams on the roads, and students will not lose concentration due to the sounds of sermons and band music. On the other hand, some believe that even if an election is held none of these will happen; instead, new thieves will appear, robbers in different guises, corruption-hungry officials, bribe-takers in religious attire, and newly styled money launderers. The current ACC Commissioner Miah Muhammad Ali Akbar Azizi has recounted at a public hearing how he himself paid bribes; he described the harassment he faced in obtaining approvals or no-objection certificates from numerous institutions for a multi-storey building design, and mentioned how he had to pay one lakh taka in bribes the very day before going on Hajj. Since giving bribes is a crime, no one admits to it, but even honest people have to pay them; proving it is difficult. Even if proof is found, fighting the administration is foolish, because the bribe-takers know the countless sections of law, and which ones are non-bailable. These things do not happen only under dictatorships; they happen under the democratic systems of elected governments too.

The empowerment of the people is said to be the main feature of democratic elections; yet in Bangladesh, every time an election has been held the people have been disempowered. Every party elected with manifestos against inequality, bribery, corruption and communalism has compromised with all crimes once in power. With every transfer of power through elections, corruption and the poison of communalism have grown. Opposition parties have always marched, held meetings, and shed blood on the streets for fair elections; but once in power these same parties have taken every illegal means to consolidate power. It is in the attempt to make power permanent that the governments of Awami League, BNP and Jatiya Party have fallen through uprisings. Since independence, all governments have been authoritarian and fascist. In all three parties the word of the top leader is law, the party runs by their command, and there is not the slightest trace of democratic practice within. Thus when these parties come to power, the autocratic behaviour of the party chief automatically casts its shadow over government.

Elections only change corrupt persons. Sadly, in our country the election itself is also corrupt, and those who have corrupted elections have themselves fallen. It was for corrupting elections that Pakistan’s President Ayub Khan fell. Even in the first election of Bangladesh in 1973, there was rigging. Awami League could have won a sweeping victory in a fair election; but they wanted to win all 300 seats. Though Awami League’s Khandakar Mushtaq lost by a huge margin to independent candidate Abdur Rashid Engineer, Mushtaq was declared the winner – and such incidents happened more than once.

Then came Ziaur Rahman’s ‘referendum’, and the second parliamentary election in 1979. In the referendum, in some centres the votes cast for Ziaur Rahman exceeded the total number of voters. Under Ershad came the 1986 and 1988 elections, under BNP the Magura by-election of 1994 and the February 1996 general election, and under Awami League the 2014 election – all one-sided and monopolised. Everyone also knows about the night voting of 2018. From independence until today, not one election under a party government has been free and fair. The four elections under caretaker governments appeared fair externally, but opposition MPs were absent from parliament; yet even in absence they did not forget to take their salaries and allowances. It is to elect such unethical MPs that we must vote.

What happens in parliament? Whatever the ruling government wants is passed, passed by voice vote. In the past fifty-four years in Bangladesh, no party government has ever faced difficulty in passing repressive laws inside or outside parliament. To curb free speech or suppress opposition, all governments have made repressive laws in the name of democratic procedure; and when passing these laws, objections from opposition MPs have never been heeded. The same will happen in the future. In this very parliament MPs who impose taxes on the people have been allowed to import cars tax-free.

An interesting point is that when it comes to taking personal benefits there is no conflict between ruling and opposition MPs. MPs are people’s representatives; but inside and outside parliament their behaviour is not representative. Outside parliament we hear of slapping and scuffles; inside we hear of MPs hurling abuse. They have other irritating habits too – in the two minutes allotted for their speech they spend one and three-quarter minutes praising the party leader, carefully picking adjectives from the dictionary to attract their leader’s attention; but when the party leader is absent they have no interest in speaking on behalf of the people. For such a parliament the leaders of political parties may show sky-high interest, but the people are exasperated.

In a democracy where the whims and wishes of ruling party MPs can make good or bad things lawful, there is no need for a caretaker government, nor is a fair election essential. In Bangladesh, intellectuals raise their voices for electoral transparency; but they cannot compel the government to establish good governance or democratic conduct. By holding elections, governments that enact anti-people laws and carry out anti-people activities allow citizens the chance to enjoy one day of democracy by casting their vote; but just as in the Middle East one cannot speak against a king or sultan and escape, so too in Bangladesh one cannot speak against an elected government and remain outside the cage.

In the Middle East those who speak against a king or sultan are cut into pieces with a saw like journalist Khashoggi; in Bangladesh it takes the form of attacks, lawsuits, remand, abduction, murder, mob lynching, and so on. All of it happens under democratic procedures, all under the patronage of elected governments. Thus it seems elections are needed only to provide a legal basis for certain misdeeds of government. There is a severe lack of good governance in Bangladesh. Once in power they say, it is a new country, good governance cannot be expected so soon. But the opposition does not say that. Even at fifty-four years of age, why Bangladesh has remained a child – that question has never been answered by the ruling political party.

The people of this country have never seen a truly democratic election or system of governance, nor does it seem they will in the near future. Even so, the people do not want to kick away the ballot box like Maulana Bhashani. Because in the atmosphere of voting sometimes voters too receive something in return – as the Chief Adviser himself has said. Awami League is practically banned, though the Chief Adviser has described the ban on its activities as merely ‘temporary’; but it does not appear that Awami League will be allowed to contest. Thus the so-called ‘one family’ of Dr Muhammad Yunus has not been formed, and thereby a boil for the future has been created.

After the Second World War, though the English gave independence to their colonies across the world, they left one or more boils in each colony; the poison of these boils still makes every country fight ethnic conflicts and wage wars with neighbours. The failure to form one family has created such a boil in Bangladesh’s political sphere that, if not today then tomorrow, will surely cause an explosion. This is not just our view, but also that of the 125-year-old newspaper Japan Times. Pakistan’s influential newspaper The Dawn has also said that cancelling the registration of Awami League and banning it from elections will cast doubt on the transparency of Bangladesh’s future elections.

If an election is held without any reforms, how will it prevent the rise of dictatorship? The Election Commission we see now is nothing but a gathering of new people in an old structure. Without some basic electoral reforms, the upcoming election will certainly be questionable. The uprising was not only to bring down the Awami League government, it was a greater drive to change the rotten mindset of the nation and make Bangladesh a humane, democratic and discrimination-free state; but a whole year has gone by in mere ‘Awami phobia’ and unnecessary wrangling. If elections are held in the old way, the ‘spirit of the July revolution’ itself may be questioned.

Zeauddin Ahmed: Former Executive Director, Bangladesh Bank