Political Analysis : Bangladesh Electoral Crisis

0 comments
Bangladesh’s rul­ing party has won one of the most vio­lent elec­tions in the country’s his­tory, marred by street fight­ing, low turnout and a boy­cott by the oppo­si­tion which made the result a fore­gone con­clu­sion. Par­lia­men­tary elec­tions held on 5th Jan­u­ary 2014 were marred by vio­lence and the main oppo­si­tion, which is the 18-party alliance led by the Bangladesh Nation­al­ist Party (BNP), had boy­cotted the polls. Their griev­ance was that the rul­ing party, Awami League (AL), has amended the con­sti­tu­tion to do away with the require­ment for a non-partisan care­taker gov­ern­ment to over­see the elec­tions. Instead a multi-party com­mit­tee was formed by the cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter and head of AL, Sheikh Hasina, to over­see the elec­tions, which left her in power dur­ing the elec­tion period. The BNP claimed that elec­tions had not been fair under Hasina and has been con­tin­u­ing to stage repeated protests and strikes across the coun­try. The ensu­ing vio­lence has been one of the worst episodes of polit­i­cal rivalry that the coun­try has ever witnessed.
Repeal­ing the require­ment for a care­taker gov­ern­ment was per­ceived by the oppo­si­tion as a ploy under­taken by Hasina to remain in power. This is because the AL became increas­ingly unpop­u­lar over the last 5 years. Also, AL and the BNP have been rotat­ing in power over the last two decades yet, nei­ther of them have ever been re-elected for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive term. The results of the munic­i­pal elec­tions held in mid-2013 also indi­cated that AL’s chances of return­ing to power did not look favourable.
Some of the rea­sons for AL’s unpop­u­lar­ity include:
1) The government’s incom­pe­tent han­dling of the Pilkhana mas­sacre that resulted in some of the best army offi­cers of the coun­try being mur­dered [1],
2) A num­ber of high pro­file cor­rup­tion scan­dals involv­ing indi­vid­u­als with close links to the rul­ing party, such as the Padma bridge scan­dal [2],
3) AL’s inabil­ity to resolve water-sharing dis­putes and to sign a land bound­ary agree­ment with India over dis­puted bor­der regions[3] despite the AL gov­ern­ment deliv­er­ing on India’s demands for tran­sit, access to Chit­tagong port, and help­ing India crack­down on sep­a­ratist groups in India’s north­east; and,
4) The ter­ror spread by some AL lead­ers, espe­cially those of their stu­dent wing, Chha­tro League, who are noto­ri­ous for their involve­ment in a plethora of rape cases .[4]
Fur­ther­more, AL is also seen as try­ing to sup­press all forms of polit­i­cal Islam. This was most appar­ent in the bru­tal man­ner the secu­rity forces sup­pressed the protest, organ­ised by Hefazat-e-Islam, against the athe­ist blog­gers who insulted the Prophet Muham­mad (Peace Be Upon Him).[5] The far­ci­cal tri­als of the Jamat-e-Islami lead­ers and the exe­cu­tion of Abdul Quader Molla, fur­ther strength­ened this per­cep­tion. Hasina’s stances against polit­i­cal Islam have cemented her back­ing from India, who do not want Bangladesh to become a hotbed of “extrem­ism”. India con­sid­ers the Islamic par­ties that the BNP have allied with, includ­ing Jamat-e-Islami, to be extrem­ist groups. Also, AL has repeat­edly ful­filled the afore­men­tioned Indian demands thus secur­ing India’s inter­ests. Hence, India plans to step up diplo­matic efforts fol­low­ing the elec­tions to pre­vent any inter­na­tional crit­i­cism of Hasina. [7]
Although, the Indian For­eign Sec­re­tary Sujatha Singh has expressed hope that the elec­tions would find “wide acceptability”[6], the West on the other hand, most notably the US, have raised con­cerns about the cred­i­bil­ity of the elec­tions, given that the main oppo­si­tion par­ties did not par­tic­i­pate and 154 out of 300 seats in the par­lia­ment were won unop­posed by AL can­di­dates. The US has been try­ing to con­vince Hasina to nego­ti­ate a com­pro­mise with the BNP, and to con­vince India to change its strictly pro-AL pol­icy towards Bangladesh. This caused some Indian offi­cials to accuse the US of “doing every­thing to bring back the BNP to power.” [8]   
Khaleda Zia has appre­ci­ated the US’s push for a con­sen­sus solu­tion and has called on India to “respect the aspi­ra­tions” of the peo­ple of Bangladesh: “I thank the gov­ern­ments of the US, UK, Canada, Aus­tralia, China and Japan and the Euro­pean Union and other friendly coun­tries as they have con­tin­ued to call for a con­sen­sus to resolve the cri­sis,” stated Zia.[9] The US, UK, UNand the Com­mon­wealth did not send observers to the elec­tion, mean­ing the elec­tion would lack inter­na­tional recog­ni­tion. In a press state­ment issued on the day fol­low­ing the elec­tions, the US State Depart­ment deputy spokes­woman Marie Harf expressed dis­ap­point­ment at the elec­tions and ques­tioned its cred­i­bil­ity. She also called for fresh elec­tions say­ing, “…we encour­age the Gov­ern­ment of Bangladesh and oppo­si­tion par­ties to engage in imme­di­ate dia­logue to find a way to hold as soon as pos­si­ble elec­tions that are free, fair, peace­ful, and cred­i­ble, reflect­ing the will of the Bangladeshi peo­ple.” [10]
In the after­math of the elec­tions, the dis­grun­tled oppo­si­tion is likely to keep caus­ing more vio­lence on the streets of Bangladesh. There are spec­u­la­tions of an army-takeover, sim­i­lar to what occurred in 2007, if the sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ues to dete­ri­o­rate. How­ever, many com­men­ta­tors have ruled out the pos­si­bil­ity of such a recurrence.[11] This is because, pre­vi­ously, theUN threat­ened to can­cel the Bangladeshi army’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in UN peace­keep­ing mis­sions if polit­i­cal vio­lence con­tin­ued. This was seen as an indi­rect mes­sage from the UN for the Bangladeshi army to take mea­sures to curb the vio­lence. Con­trary, the UN has recently requested Bangladeshi troops for its mis­sion in Sudan, indi­cat­ing that an army inter­ven­tion will not find the same approval from the UN as before. Another pos­si­bil­ity is that of new elec­tions being held within a year, which is what the US has called for. How­ever, once again, India may not be in agree­ment with the US on this mat­ter. What­ever the out­come of the cur­rent polit­i­cal unrest may be, a lot will depend on the nature of agree­ment reached between the inter­na­tional play­ers regard­ing the fate of the coun­try.  

0 comments:

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)