by M Serajul Islam:

BANGLADESH celebrates its 52nd Independence Day on March 26. And between this one and the next, the present parliament will complete its five-year term on January 2, 2024. The national or general elections for Bangladesh’s next parliament must be held within three months of this date. The big question in Bangladesh currently is whether its next national election will be free, fair and participatory, or controversial like the 2014 and 2018 elections, where the vast majority of voters were unable to vote.

The election is currently deadlocked between the ruling Awami League and the main opposition the Bangladesh Nationalist Party over the way it would be held. The Awami League, in power since January 2009, wants it to be held according to the constitution, under the 15th amendment that it brought to the constitution in June 2011. The BNP wants the Awami League government to step down and hand power to an interim, non-party administration to conduct the elections.

A national election is a routine event in a democratic country. In the case of Bangladesh, this routine political event is anything but routine. The people of Bangladesh won the right to a free, fair and participatory national election through a war of liberation in which hundreds of thousands embraced martyrdom. Therefore, the people of Bangladesh, for justifiable reasons, view their national elections and their right to vote in it with pride and passion. The deadlock between the Awami League and the BNP over the next election is therefore a matter of grave concern for them that must be resolved for their sake and that of the country.

An examination of the League’s stand, however, opens the proverbial Pandora’s Box. It reveals that it was the Awami League that had demanded the non-party caretaker government for the national elections for the first time in Bangladesh’s history during the BNP’s 1991–96 term. The Awami League with the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and the Jatiya Party as allies had forced the BNP to adopt the caretaker government system through 173 days of the general strike that had witnessed death and destruction and had brought the country to a standstill and Sir Ninian Stevens, Australia’s retired governor general, to Dhaka as the special envoy of Shridath Ramphal, the Commonwealth Secretary-General, to negotiate a settlement. He was unsuccessful.

The Awami League was upset about losing the 1991 elections, the first after the fall of General HM Ershad’s nearly decade-long military rule, that it was sure of winning. The Awami League blamed the loss on ‘subtle rigging’. It was apprehensive of regaining power unless the constitution was amended to take power away from the party in office and given to a non-party caretaker government to hold the national elections. Sheikh Hasina wanted the caretaker government system so desperately and was so confident about its ability to hold the national elections freely and fairly that she had even stated during the AL’s 1991–96 movement that she wanted the caretaker government system to remain ‘for life’ that the Awami League has now conveniently forgotten.

The AL/allies’ movement for the caretaker government system was energised by the Magura by-election in 1994 that the BNP allegedly rigged with the help of the civil bureaucracy and law enforcement agencies. The AL/allies argued strongly for public support that the neutrality of the law enforcement agencies and the civil administration was indispensable for holding the national election freely and fairly although those institutions were not politicised in BNP’s favour at that time. The Janatar Mancha of 1996 underlined that the civil administration at that time was more politicised for the Awami League than the ruling BNP!

The BNP held the February 1996 election under the constitution with Khaleda Zia as the prime minister and won it handsomely with 278 seats because the AL/allies boycotted it. The BNP thus won the constitutional right to a full five-year term. It, however, had other ideas. It used its two-thirds majority to adopt the 13th amendment in a matter of minutes to hold Bangladesh’s first national election under the caretaker government system in June 1996. The BNP lost the election marginally, 118–146, which allowed the Awami League to form the first government through a national election under the caretaker government system.

The BNP regained power in the second election under the caretaker government system in 2001. The Awami League again blamed its loss on a ‘huge conspiracy’ for Sheikh Hasina’s refusal to sell gas to India through a US company during the Awami League’s 1996–2001 term. The accusation was not proven. Although the BNP won the election with 193 seats to the Awami League’s 62, the difference between the BNP and the Awami League on actual votes cast was marginal, underscoring the potential of the caretaker government system to deliver a free, fair and participatory election. Perhaps the system needed fine-tuning through negotiations between the BNP and the Awami League. The caretaker government system received kudos at home and abroad as a panacea, a remedy for holding an election in a developing democracy, freely and fairly.

The Awami League, however, had other plans in mind with the caretaker government system that surfaced, but only after Pranab Mukherjee’s autobiography, ‘The Coalition Years,’ was published in 2017. The former president, who was India’s influential Finance Minister during the emergency government of Mainuddin-Fakhruddin, wrote that he had found General Mainuddin apprehensive about his future if Sheikh Hasina came to power through the December 2008 national election of Bangladesh, when he had met him during the General’s six-day official visit to New Delhi in February 2008. Pranab Mukherjee further wrote that he had assured the General of his ‘personal responsibility’ for his ‘survival after Hasina’s return to power.’

The Awami League’s plan for its 1991–96 movement for the caretaker government system was not just to take power from the BNP but to do so with the two-thirds majority required to amend the constitution. The Awami League wanted to amend the constitution to install the BAKSAL or the one-party system that it had done in 1974 with the 4th amendment that was aborted in the aftermath of its loss of power on August 15, 1975. The Awami League found to its dismay through the 1996 and 2001 elections that the caretaker government system alone would not give it the two-thirds majority it needed to amend the constitution.

The meeting between Pranab Mukherjee and General Mainuddin was heaven’s answer to AL’s prayers. Pranab Mukherjee’s assurance was also heaven’s answer to the General’s prayers. The General held all the shots in Bangladesh leading to its December 2008 national election. He was gravely scared for well-known reasons about the BNP winning the 2008 national election because he knew as did everybody at that time, that he would be incarcerated at least if the BNP won, and perhaps worse. He was, therefore, willing to stop the BNP from winning the December 2008 election at any cost.

The General supervised the 2008 election but more importantly, his men in uniform developed the software that was used for the 2008 national elections over which they alone had full control. The Awami League thus predictably won the 2008 elections by the two-thirds majority that was its dream, 230 seats against 30 by the BNP, which also explains among other reasons, the BNP’s present stand against the use of the electronic voting machines in Bangladesh’s next national election. The two-thirds majority gave the Awami League the proverbial Holy Grail for remaining in power perpetually by reviving the BAKSAL system.

In June 2011, the Awami League adopted the 15th amendment as its constitutional shield for its BAKSAL vision. The 15th amendment annulled the 13th amendment as the first step towards the fulfilment of its BAKSAL vision. The Awami League annulled the caretaker government system that was the fruit of the AL/allies’ 1991–96 movement because it gave all political parties including its nemesis, the BNP, the chance of winning a national election.

The Awami League did something unbelievable with the 15th amendment for the fulfilment of its BAKSAL vision. It did not annul the existing parliament during the national time that is mandatory to hold a parliamentary election worldwide. The amendment thus allowed all parties the constitutional right to nominate sitting MPs to contest in a national election with their rights and privileges intact. The absurdity of this provision becomes obvious because, in reality, under it, the Awami League and its allies would be able to nominate sitting members of parliament to contest in all the 300 seats and the opposition not even one in the next general election!

The AL/allies are however not expected to nominate all their sitting 300 MPs in the next election. They will, nevertheless, nominate the overwhelming majority of them simply for the awesome advantage that this provision in the 15th amendment gives them. This vast number of sitting MPs will, therefore, contest the next election as sons-in-law of the regime against opposition candidates who will be the step-sons! When the fact that the next election would also be held under the Awami League government is brought into this surreal equation, the 15th amendment cannot be seen in any other way than as the game changer for the ruling party. The opposition parties could contest under such a system only to commit political hara-kiri or suicide.

The BNP and its allies, therefore, boycotted the 2014 national elections under the 15th amendment causing it to become the most controversial election in the history of a national election anywhere. The election commission and the Awami League government knew after the last date of withdrawal of nominations had passed a month ahead of the day of the 2014 elections that there would be no election in 153 of the 300 seats because there were no candidates from the opposition. Yet they went into denial over logic and reason because 151 was the magical number for an absolute majority in an assembly of 300 seats. They held the election anyway, making it a farce.

The 2018 election was bizarre. The BNP participated in it for reasons it never explained in denial of the reasons for boycotting the 2014 election. Nevertheless, the AL supporters with alleged assistance of law enforcement agencies, stuffed ballot boxes the midnight before election day, thus earning it the ‘midnight election’ nickname. The Awami League thus won 293 seats against seven by the BNP. The 2014 and 2018 national elections established that the Awami League had transformed with the 15th amendment, it’s Holy Grail, all 300 seats of the national assembly into what the BNP had done in one by-election seat in Magura in 1994! The 2014 and 2018 elections also established that the AL’s constitutional shield with the 15th amendment was impregnable and there was no point in the opposition taking part under it at all.

The Awami League, nevertheless, did not leave it just to the 15th amendment or its constitutional shield alone to perpetuate its BAKSAL vision of remaining forever in power. It built the political shield as well. Since coming to power in January 2009, it systematically politicised the civil bureaucracy and the law enforcement agencies to such an extent that the members of these institutions, whose neutrality is indispensable for a free and fair election in a parliamentary democracy, as was claimed by the Awami League itself during its movement for the caretaker government system, are today as biased and partial towards the Awami League and its cadres, particularly during the national elections.

The big powers, namely the US/EU and the UN that are presently supporting the right of the people of Bangladesh to a free, fair and participatory national election, were passive during Bangladesh’s 2008, 2014 and 2018 elections as they did not want the BNP to win power because of the War on Terror and its alliance with the Jamaat. India wanted the Awami League to be in power at any cost for a wide number of reasons based on history, economics and geopolitics. The roles of these external powers, in retrospect, encouraged the Awami League to build the constitutional and political shields to remain in power indefinitely to implement its BAKSAL vision that these powers should keep in perspective and not forget.

The US, the EU and the UN, fortunately for the people of Bangladesh and not so fortunately for the Awami League, have dramatically changed their stand on Bangladesh since president Biden came to power in January 2021. The end of the War on Terror in August 2021 has taken the reason that the US, the EU and the UN had to see the Awami League in power which was to keep the BNP/Jamaat from gaining it, out of the current equation. These powers now want Bangladesh’s next elections to be free, fair and participatory with the freedom of the civil society and the media assured because they are using human rights, democracy and electoral rights issues globally as flagships for dealing with Russia and China.

The US has already benefitted significantly by making human rights, democracy and free and fair elections the flagships of both its domestic and international politics. With president Biden likely to seek a second term in 2024 and the fight against Russia and China for global dominance likely to intensify in the time ahead, the focus of the US, the EU and the UN for democracy and free, fair and participatory elections in Bangladesh is likely to become stronger as Bangladesh moves closer to its next general elections.

India is not on board with the US, the EU and the UN on Bangladesh’s politics and its next general elections. Nevertheless, New Delhi is also not backing the Awami League the way it had backed it in the past, in the 2014 elections in particular. Furthermore, India has lost a great deal of its strategic dominance in Bangladesh to the Chinese since 2017 and its ability to help the Awami League is not the same as it was before. Therefore, the external pressure on the Awami League for a free, fair and participatory national election would be formidable.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and its adverse impact on the world economy, in general, and the Bangladesh economy, in particular, has come at a very bad time and unexpectedly for the Awami League. It has pushed millions of Bangladeshis into economic miseries and hardships that they did not face since the famine of 1974. The Economist in its March 2 issue carried out a report that stated that Bangladesh’s economic miracle is now in jeopardy because of other reasons, not the adverse impact that the Russia-Ukraine war. Moody’s, one of the world’s three biggest global rating agencies, has downgraded the outlook of Bangladesh’s critically important banking sector from ‘stable’ to ‘negative.’

The economic downturn has led to a dangerous decline in Bangladesh’s foreign exchange reserves, a fall in remittance, etcetera. Most importantly, the dream that the regime and its ‘economic sycophants’ had built with their claim that Bangladesh had become a Singapore has vanished into thin air. The Singapore storyline was very important for the Awami League politically because it had argued with it what the Ayub Khan regime had argued during its decade of development, that if people were given economic prosperity, they would not be bothered by the political rights or their right to vote!

The BNP, meanwhile, has successfully brought most of the opposition political parties behind its demand for the next national under the caretaker government. It has also established credibility with the larger part of the population for its demand for caretaker government system through its 10 divisional rallies that it held between October and December last year that were peaceful. BNP supporters and many ordinary folks in hundreds of thousands attended overcoming all conceivable obstacles put by the AL-led government and its cadres and supported by the law enforcement agencies. Several BNP activists were also killed during these rallies which only increased their determination to attend these rallies underlining that fear will not stop them anymore from demanding their political rights of which the most important one now is their right to vote freely and fairly in the next general election.

The AL’s other defence that it must hold the next election under the 15th amendment because it cannot go against the constitution appears extremely tenuous from what emerged from Pandora’s Box while examining its stand to deny the BNP’s demand for the caretaker government system. The Awami League adopted the 4th or the BAKSAL amendment in a matter of minutes in April 1974 and changed the fundamental character of the constitution from a multi-party parliamentary democracy to a one-party BAKSAL system. The Awami League again interfered with the constitution in June 2011 to adopt the 15th amendment with which, in a matter of minutes again, it annulled the 13th amendment and the caretaker government system that it had forced the BNP to adopt in 1996.

The chief election commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal, who should have been a major player in any discussion about the next general election, has sidelined himself by his silence on the 15th amendment. His actions since assuming office over a year ago have exposed him as no different from his immediate two predecessors who were both unashamedly pro-Awami League. He heads in theory a powerful election commission but he has so far neither shown the will nor the ability to use it for a free and fair election. His support for electronic voting machines alone compromised his neutrality. He is, as the cliché goes, His Master’s Voice!

The Awami League does not look likely to succeed in holding another election like the ones held in 2014 and 2018 for several reasons that have emerged from Pandora’s Box. First, the party will have great difficulty ignoring the pressures of the US, the EU and the UN for a free and fair election because they have the power to retaliate; second, the BNP has united the opposition against the 15th amendment and has taken the movement for the caretaker government system to the streets by overcoming fear, and finally, the dark clouds in the country’s economic horizon are fuelling restlessness among the people who have overcome their fear and are ready to rise for their economic and political rights. The AL’s other card of an election with EVM to repeat another 2008-like election appears out of the equation by default.

Postscript: Amid the enfolding drama over the next election, the Awami League has underlined by its actions that its only objective in politics is to establish once and for all the BAKSAL or one-party system. It has thus unwittingly left the BNP to champion the cause of multi-party democracy in Bangladesh. The long-term impact of all of the above on the Awami League’s historical claim as a liberal, democratic political party could be in serious jeopardy.

M Serajul Islam is a former career ambassador.