Is Bangladesh moving towards one-party state?

Shakhawat Hossain

The “controversial” jailing of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and the state persecution of dissent have raised fears that the next parliamentary election could turn into a violent sham, according to a recent Al Jazeera report. 

The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) boycotted last elections held in 2014, demanding poll-time government for free and fair elections. The next election is due in December 2018.

The Al Jazeera report titled “Is Bangladesh moving towards one-party state?” said that there is widespread concern, even among the common people, “over what lies ahead in an election year”.

Al Jazeera reported that the ruling Awami League (AL) government faces allegations of a “concerted persecution of its opponents”. 
In support of its report, Al Jazeera also gave the reference to German think-tank Bertelsmann Foundation’s report that listed Bangladesh as a new autocracy.

Al Jazeera has quoted a Bangladeshi women working with a multination company in Dhaka as saying that the Awami League already suppressed all dissent to such an extent that she doesn’t think “anyone would dare to protest against them”.

Hasan Habib is the owner of a real estate company based in Dhaka. He says “the enmities between the two leading political parties” have made the voting process “a nearly impossible task”.

Enforced disappearance

Since the controversial imprisonment of Bangladesh’s opposition leader and three-time Prime Minister Khaleda Zia in February, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to reject allegations of turning into an authoritarian regime, observed Al Jazeera.

Although Bwegum Zia was granted bail by the High Court, the country’s Supreme Court stayed the bail within a week “without assigning any reason”, effectively putting the 73-year-old leader in jail till the next hearing on May 8. 

The BNP alleges that over 500 of its supporters have been killed and nearly 750 “abducted” by the police and thrown in various jails since 2014. The party claims around 150 more of its missing workers have either been killed in extrajudicial encounters or have been forced to disappear.

The main opposition party says it has not yet decided on a plan of action following the Zia verdict. The party has largely resorted to non-violent protests against the crackdown on it. However, as permissions for political rallies are denied, many in the BNP are losing patience with the strategy of holding peaceful protests.
The spectre of large-scale violence now threatens to destabilise the parliamentary elections in the country scheduled to be held in December this year.

The German think-tank Bertelsmann Foundation recently released a report that said the country is now under an autocratic rule. Listing 13 countries “where the political situation has become significantly worse”, the report said in five of these countries, namely Bangladesh, Lebanon, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Uganda, “democracy has been gradually undermined for years” and that they no longer meet its minimum standards.

Scepticism over elections

In 2014, Hasina had returned to power for a second consecutive term through a controversial and bloody national election, which was boycotted by the centre-right BNP.

Police and judiciary used as tool to suppress 

In her 10-year tenure as the prime minister of Bangladesh, Skeikh Hasina has been accused of using the state’s law enforcement apparatus as well as the judiciary to suppress the voice of the opposition.

Rights groups, both local and international, have reported a deteriorating human rights situation in Bangladesh in recent years.
Bangladesh rights group Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) says as many as 519 people have allegedly fallen victim to enforced disappearances since 2010 while over 300 people are still missing.
“My father has been missing since December 4,” said Shabnam Zaman, daughter of former Bangladesh ambassador to Qatar and Vietnam, Maroof Zaman, who was accused of sharing “anti-government posts” on social media and was allegedly scooped up by unidentified abductors in Dhaka in December last year.
“The police stopped their investigation when they came to know about the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of my father,” she told Al Jazeera.

On March 13 this year, Jakir Hossain, a leader of Chatra Dal, which is the BNP’s student wing, died in police custody after he was allegedly tortured by the police.

A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report last year said the Bangladesh government had secretly arrested hundreds of people, mostly activists and political figures, opposed to the Hasina government.

Complete freedom, claims governmentGovernment denies all allegation

The Awami League government, however, dismissed the allegations. When Al Jazeera asked Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu about the political persecution as alleged by the BNP, he said the opposition party enjoys “complete freedom” in its exercise of the democratic rights.

“But that doesn’t mean the law enforcers will not check their activities which may harm the common people,” Inu said.

When reminded of the controversial 2014 national election, which the BNP had boycotted and which has renewed fears of a similar undermining of the electoral process in Bangladesh, Inu said; “The 2014 election was held as per the constitution. The BNP’s decision of boycotting it was a political decision and they now realise it was a wrong decision on their part.”

The Bangladesh minister also rejected the German think-tank report that called the AL government autocratic as “intentional” and “baseless”. He said he was eager to know what data Bertelsmann Stiftung had looked at.

“All the arms of a true democracy, including the judiciary and media, are fully independent in Bangladesh,” Inu said.
Senior Awami League leader Faruq Khan told Al Jazeera the rights groups’ accusation of human rights violation in Bangladesh is not true.

“Our government has, in fact, set up an example before the world of upholding human rights by giving refuge to a million Rohingya refugees who have fled Myanmar,” Khan said.

‘Dangerous sign in a democracy’

But the experts and rights activists are not buying the government’s defence. Meenakshi Ganguly, who is the South Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, says Bangladesh may have won international praise for its humanitarian response to the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya by Myanmar but the domestic human rights situation remains a cause for concern.

“The government continues to deny enforced disappearances … It must release individuals taken into custody by the security forces. Many of those disappeared are linked to the political opposition,” Ganguly told Al Jazeera.

Ganguly said Bangladeshi journalists and activists operate in a climate of fear, while many citizens have been slapped with cases for criticising the government on social media.

Ali Riaz from the Illinois State University in the United States told Al Jazeera that the current political and human rights situation in Bangladesh is “not suitable” for holding an election, let alone an “inclusive” one.

Riaz thinks if the beleaguered BNP is forced to boycott the next national election, along with other parties of the political alliance it leads, the election will be “hollow without any moral legitimacy, just like the 2014 elections”.

“Continued persecution of the opposition is not only unwise, but also counterproductive. There is a tendency among the ruling parties here to forget that,” said Riaz.

Asif Nazrul, a professor of law at Dhaka University, said that the government denies the BNP and other opposition parties permission to hold rallies and processions “on security grounds”, while it continues to hold large rallies in the run-up to the elections.
“It’s a government and a political party which believe that they are not accountable to anyone. It’s a dangerous sign in a democracy,” said Nazrul.

Bangladesh listed as new ‘autocracy’

It is noted here that a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation had earlier found that Bangladesh is currently an autocracy. The ruling party rejected the findings, although experts say one-party rule and political instability are major issues.

The BBC report quoted German firm Bertelsmann Stiftung as saying that 58 countries in 129 countries are now under dictatorship and 71 countries have been described as democratic.

Germany’s Bertelsmann Foundation published its “Transformation Index 2018 (BTI)” on March 22, 2018 and 58 out of 129 developing nations have been rated as autocracies. Bangladesh, Lebanon, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Uganda are considered by Bertelsmann to be “new” autocracies.

“Due to the worsened quality of elections, the formerly fifth largest democracy is classified as an autocracy again,” the report said about Bangladesh.

“These developments are worrying for citizens because corruption, social exclusion and barriers to fair economic competition continue to be more prevalent in autocracies.”

World communities sees autocracy

The BTI has measured quality of democracy, market economy and governance in 129 developing and transformation countries since 2006.

According to the study, democracy has been undermined in these five countries for years, and it is often the shortcomings in the quality of elections that tipped the balance.

“These five new autocracies have crossed a threshold that the defective democracies of Honduras, Hungary, Moldova, Niger, the Philippines and Turkey are nearing, though to varying degrees,” the report said.

The study was conducted on 129 countries. The assessment period was from February 1, 2015 to January 31, 2017.

Based in Gütersloh, Germany, Bertelsmann Stiftung is an independent foundation under private law. It was founded in 1977 by Reinhard Mohn.

The average quality of worldwide democracy, governance and market economy fell to its lowest level in 21 years with much of the decline happening in free societies, it said.

The report categories 58 countries as autocracies while 71 as democracies. The last survey painted a better picture with 55 autocracies and 74 democracies.

In the democracy index, Bangladesh along with Russia ranked 80, out of the 129 countries reviewed.

“Only Burkina Faso and Sri Lanka were making significant progress towards democracy,” says the report.

In South Asia, the position of Pakistan is lower than Bangladesh. Pakistan ranks 98. “It is not so much the slight increase in the number of autocracies that is worrying. More problematic is the fact that civil rights are being curtailed and the rule of law undermined in an increasing number of democracies as well,” the report noted.

Commenting on the findings, CEO Aart De Geus of the institution said, “Many rulers try to cement their claim to leadership through repressive measures. However, in the long run, ruling by coercion and not by dialog always leads to a dead end.”

The research group that has been regularly conducting survey since 2006 excluded from its study mature democracies of North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and elsewhere.

Only Burkina Faso and Sri Lanka were making significant progress towards democracy during the period under review. By contrast, there are a total of 13 countries, including Mozambique, Turkey and Yemen, where the political situation has become significantly worse. Five of these 13 countries no longer meet minimum standards for democracy: Bangladesh, Lebanon, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Uganda, where democracy has been gradually undermined for years, are under autocratic rule. It was often shortcomings in the quality of elections that tipped the balance,” reads the report.

Bangladesh government rejects findings

Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League Party has rejected the study as baseless. However, the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), claimed that the report reflects the true nature of Bangladesh’s current political climate.
Regarding this report, an adviser to the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, HT Imam said that the study is motivated and baseless.

When questioning him about the report, HT Imam said where did they get the information of the report based on the survey? If the report is based on the information taken since 2015, then the incident happened in Bangladesh.

HT Imam said that anyone who works in democracy or election in Bangladesh has never heard of any such study from anyone.
In the context of the question that has been asked in the report that Bangladesh is not being protected from the minimum standards of democracy, HT Imam said, what criteria should we learn from the Germans? Hitler‘s country?

HT Imam claimed that the parliamentary election of 2014 has been accepted by all the countries in the world.

He said that the election was done properly, everyone took part. If this study is done after the election, then it should be understood that there are other reasons behind it.

Responding to the question about the freedom of citizen rights and freedom of expression in Bangladesh, HT Imam said there are more than three hundred daily newspapers published from Dhaka and the government does not interfere with the freedom of speech.
Abdul Matin Khasru, a prominent Awami League member, told local media in response to the BTI that the country is a “100 percent democratic country” and there’s “no option to question its standards.”

“Maybe the Germany-based think tank collected information from wrong sources who had no connection to Bangladesh or from anti-Bangladesh and anti-Awami League people,” he reportedly said.
Robert Schwarz, a project manager for the BTI at the Bertelsmann Foundation, however, recommended that Bangladeshi politicians read the report before commenting on its findings.

“The authors of the Bangladesh Report highlighted that both the government and the opposition have contributed to the incremental deteriorations in some democracy indicators,” he told DW.

Schwarz added that the report highlights positive developments in the economic realm in terms of economic output, macroeconomic stability, market-based competition and private enterprise. It also includes negative developments in the political realm such as free and fair elections, the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary.

Less Democracy, More Development

“Kom Gonotontra, Besi Unnayan” – Less Democracy, More Development – is the new motto of the Bangladesh Awami League, Bangladesh’s ruling party. Led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the party has decided to embrace the path of “soft dictatorship”.
Across the country, the party’s workers are rigorously touting the benefits of the new motto, an attempt which appears to be working with the general public.

The common citizen prefers to worry about bettering their standard of living rather than their freedom of speech, expression, or other fundamentals of democracy, which are usually taken for granted unless their absence begins to make life unpleasant.

Desire for a life-long power

The ruling party’s new propaganda is not something that it recently discovered, but a carefully-drafted strategy since the party came to power in 2009– after the rule of a military-led caretaker government.

The first step towards establishing a “soft dictatorship” was taken in 2011. Sheikh Hasina made amendments to the Constitution and abolished the caretaker government system.

General Irshad took control of the country’s government from 1982-90 when he removed the democratically-elected president, suspended the constitution, and declared martial law.

Hasina has tightened the noose around Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to remove the most significant hurdle to her goal of holding office as long as she lives. The former Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition party, Khaleda Zia, has already been prosecuted in multiple cases related to graft and abuse of authority during her tenure from 2001-2006. Already convicted, Begum Zia is now in jail for over 5 years and likely to be barred from contesting the next general elections in 2018.

Zia, former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, is among the four accused of embezzling funds in the case filed by Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) in 2010.

She has also recently been prosecuted in connection with instigating a deadly petrol bomb attack on a bus last year during an anti-government protest.

Zia’s elder son and the Vice Chairman of BNP, Tariq Rahman, has been living in forced exile in London since 2008. He has also been charged in multiple cases related to corruption and money-laundering. Her younger son, Arafat Rahman Koko, who was also convicted in a money-laundering case, died of a cardiac arrest in Malaysia in 2015. Other local leaders of BNP have also been convicted in various cases or have been assassinated.
Sheikh Hasina seems to be following in her predecessors’ unfortunate footsteps. Whether her new ‘policy’ brings about development remains to be seen, but this much is clear: the path she has chosen is detrimental to democracy and Bangladesh may soon be led by a dictator.

Progress made, but concern remains

The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has expressed concern about repeated reports of shrinking space for human rights defenders, including journalists, trade union activists, civil society activists, and for dissenting voices in general.
It voiced concern about overbroad restrictions on the activities of rights defenders imposed by certain provisions in legislation or proposed legislation of Bangladesh, including the draft Digital Security Act 2018.

The Geneva-based committee recommended ensuring a safe and favourable environment for rights defenders, reviewing the legislation, particularly Section 57 of the ICT Act and similar provisions in the draft Act and repealing the Special Powers Act, 1974.

It, however, lauded Bangladesh for achieving progress in poverty reduction, gender equality as well as attaining qualification for graduation from LDC to a developing country.
The committee on April 3 published its findings on the civil and political rights records of Mexico, Niger, Bangladesh, Central African Republic, Spain and New Zealand.

The UN body expressed worries about the pervasiveness of corruption and its devastating impact on the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights, particularly by disadvantaged and marginalised individuals and groups.

It also recommended improving public governance and ensuring transparency in the conduct of public affairs by making sure that anti-corruption legislation is strictly enforced and that all those involved in corruption, particularly high-level officials and politicians, are prosecuted without exception and also by enhancing independence and efficacy of the Anti-Corruption Commission.
The committee said it was concerned about the absence of explicit constitutional and legislative recognition of the rights of “tribes”, “minor races”, “ethnic sects and communities”.

Corruption still a big concern

The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (UNCESCR) has also expressed its concern over the pervasiveness of corruption and its devastating impact on the disadvantaged and marginalised people in Bangladesh.

It also expressed concern over “widespread clientelism”, which manipulates allocation of public fund and services, and the Anti-Corruption Commission’s “inefficiency” in combating graft.
At a press conference, Human Rights Forum Bangladesh (HRFB), a platform of 20 rights and development organisations, on April 5, 2018 highlighted a set of concerns and recommendations adopted by the UN body during its 63rd session in Geneva on March 12-29. The forum members include Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST), Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF), Nagorik Uddyog, Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF) and Steps Towards Development (Steps).

The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (UNCESCR) has expressed concern over the pervasiveness of corruption and its devastating impact on the disadvantaged and marginalised people in Bangladesh.

It also expressed apprehension over “widespread clientelism”, which manipulates allocation of public fund and services, and the Anti-Corruption Commission’s “inefficiency” in combating graft.
Bangladesh became signatory to the 1966 covenant in 1998. The government submitted the initial report in June last year. In the UN committee session, a 24-member multi-ministerial delegation, headed by State Minister for Foreign Affairs M Shahriar Alam, represented the government. An HRFB delegation attended the session, and submitted a “shadow” report.

UNCESCR recommended that Bangladesh take concrete steps to improve public governance and ensure transparency in the conduct of public affairs, she said.

It also recommended that the anti-corruption legislation is enforced strictly and all, including high-level officials and politicians, involved in graft are prosecuted without exception.

It further recommended that ACC become more independent and efficient. The UN body suggested that Bangladesh should fully incorporate the Covenant rights into its domestic legal order with a constitutional rank equal to that of civil and political rights, and that these rights are applied by the local courts at all levels.
Expressing concern over the accreditation of National Human Rights Commission of Bangladesh with a “B-status” by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions, UNCESCR called for strengthening the commission’s independence by allocating adequate funds.

It also expressed concern over repeated reports of shrinking space for human rights defenders, including journalists, trade union activists and civil society activists, and dissenting voices generally.
The UNCESCR recommended that the authorities ensure safe and favourable environment for human rights defenders and hold close consultation with them with a view to removing restrictive provisions, including Section 57 of the Information Communication and Technology Act and similar provisions in the draft Digital Security Act, 2018.

In fact, with the help of opposition free parliament the ruling Awami League (AL) is anchoring Bangladesh towards the one party dictatorship.

Prior to the 2014 sham parliamentary elections, all the opinion polls indicated that the incumbent AL would lose to the BNP in a direct contest. Anticipating the defeat in the elections, ruling Awami League party led by the current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina amended the constitution to abolish the law to hand over power to a non-partisan interim government or a caretaker government to conduct the free and fair election. Thus, unchallenged national election had already turned world’s third most populous Muslim nation into a repressive, de facto one-party state.

Holding free and fair, multi-party election is the basic tenet of a parliamentary democracy, the last parliamentary election was neither free nor fair, and off-course not the multi party. It seems that Shiekh Hasina government is determined to continue to shut all the channels for democratic participation in the country. She appears pretty determined to carry on with the same anti-democratic autocratic approach in the scheduled parliamentary election to be held in 2019. Hence, she is hell bent for a long haul for one party dictatorship in Bangladesh.

It is quite obvious that Sheikh Hasina government has proved her governance as most intolerant in the history of Bangladesh. By usurping the rights and freedom of Bangladeshi people; she wants to reinforce one person dictatorship in Bangladesh rather than one party rule. She has made her party subservient to her whims and wishes as she did with the police, judiciary and other state organs. Such situation only leads to mass uprising which is presently contained with her suppression policy but that certainly cannot be contained for long.

• Courtesy — Holiday/April 20, 2018