The much-awaited time frame for holding the deferred ninth Parliamentary elections was conveyed in the April 12, 2007-address to the nation by the Chief Advisor to theinterim government, Fakhruddin Ahmed. In the 22-minute address, the former governor of the Bangladesh Bank declared, "I would like to categorically state that we will not stay in power a day longer than it is necessary. I strongly believe, it will be possible to hold the much-awaited parliamentary elections before the end of 2008." The assurance appeared to have brought about a semblance of order to the utter confusion regarding the prospect of elections in the country. However, given the way thearmy-backed interim administration has functioned since the country passed into Emergency rule in January 2007, it is nearly certain that parliamentary democracy in Bangladesh will never be the same again, in the increasingly unlikely event of its restoration.
The dynasties that Bangladeshi politics was identified with since the formation of the nation in 1971 are visibly on the ropes. On April 11, the leader of the Awami League (AL) and a former Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, was charged with the murder of four people in political violence in October 2006. Hasina is currently in the United States and has delayed her return, fearing arrest. Her bete noire, Begum Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Prime Minister till October 2006, was not so lucky. She is currently speculated to be under house arrest in capital Dhaka and is allowed to meet only four visitors a day. Matiur Rahman Nizami, a former Industries Minister and leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, has also been charged with involvement in October 2006 violence.[Since this article was written, Sheikh Hasina has been barred by the country's military-backed interimgovernment from returning home from the US, a day after her arch political rival Begum Khaleda Zia was reported to have agreed to go abroad inexile -- Ed]
The demonstrated activism of the interim administration in Bangladesh has been the subject of intense debate. The Administration's limited mandate to prepare the ground work for the elections, has been considerably widened under the emergency provisions, to initiate steps against endemic corruption and pervasive crime in the country, a step that has been described as a necessary precursor to a free and fair election. The Administration's objectives were articulated in the Chief Advisor's declaration of April 12: "Our aim is fixed. We want to bring the corrupt, abusers of power and serious criminals within the jurisdiction of existing laws as quickly as possible. …We will show zero-tolerance in this regard."
So far, more than 160 senior politicians, top civil servants and security officials have been arrested on suspicion of graft and other economic crimes. The roundup has not only netted former Ministers from both the BNP and the AL, but also Khaleda Zia's son, Tarique Rahman. Rahman, the General Secretary of the BNP and considered to be Khaleda Zia's heir apparent in the Party, has been charged with extorting $147,000 from the owner of a Dhaka construction firm. Thegovernment has also frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in bank accounts belonging to politicians-- money it suspects was illegally obtained. A key partner in the anti-graft endeavour, the Bangladesh Bank, has said that it has information regarding the countries to which some corrupt people smuggled out their money, and the Bank is ready to initiate processes to recover the money.
Steps against corruption in a country that topped the Transparency International's annual list of corrupt countries four times in the last five years (it ranked 156th out of 163 countries in 2006) is certainly good news, and explains the support that theinterim administration has received from the country's media, intellectuals and common populace. Newspaper polls suggest that a clear majority of Bangladeshis support the presentgovernment. Indeed, the 'emergency' has emerged as the last resort for the weak, despairing, honest and powerless people in the country. The suspension of fundamental rights as well as political activity under emergency provisions, moreover, appears to have given the majority of the people a welcome break from the country's bitterly polarized politics, unruly mass rallies, demonstrations and pitched street battles between the two main political formations. Thus, even the March 7, 2007, total ban on any form of political activity has also been widely welcomed.
There are, however, glaring indications that the government's massive reforms process to free the country's politics and election from the influence of money and muscle, is overstepping its mandate. The April 11 move to charge AL leader Sheikh Hasina with murder and other offences committed during street demonstrations on October 28, 2006, has been seen as a move that was largely unnecessary. Similarly, the April 13 arrest of the former law minister in the last BNPgovernment and BNP Standing Committee member, Barrister Moudud Ahmed, by the army-led Joint Forces, from his house in the Gulshan locality of capital Dhaka, is being considered a step that did not even come under the purview of the anti-corruption moves. Ahmed, who also served as the country's Prime Minister and Vice President under Gen. Muhammad Ershad's military regime, has been booked under the Narcotics Control Act.
There are also indications that the government is growing progressively intolerant of any criticism of its actions. On April 9, Tajul Islam Faruk, the chief of Westmont Offshore Limited, a Bangladesh-Malaysia joint venture power company filed an extortion case against Sheikh Hasina. The Westmont official complained that Sheikh Hasina, during her tenure in office (1996-2001), extorted over US $441,000 for approving the 40 megawatt power plant at Baghabari in the Sirajganj District. Interestingly, the complaint was lodged two days after the AL supremo, in an interview with BBC's Bangla service, termed theinterim administration of Fakhruddin Ahmed as 'undemocratic and unconstitutional'. She stated, further, that the country could not be run under a state of emergency for an extended time.
Fakhruddin Ahmed, during his media interactions, has taken pains to explain that he is committed to holding parliamentary elections and has no intentions of overstaying his welcome. Unfortunately, the direction in which the country is heading was indicated in the April 2, 2007, assertion by thearmy Chief, Lt. Gen. Moeen U. Ahmed. Presenting a keynote paper at the regional conference of the International Political Science Association held at Dhaka, thearmy Chief declared that the country should not go back to being run by an "elective democracy". Moeen Ahmed, who was appointed to his present position by the BNP-led alliancegovernment on June 15, 2005, stated: "We do not want to go back to an elective democracy where corruption becomes all-pervasive, governance suffers in terms of insecurity and violation of rights, and where political criminalisation threatens the very survival and integrity of the state." He said Bangladesh would have to construct 'its own brand of democracy', "recognising its social, historical and cultural conditions, with religion being one of the several components of its national identity". He went on to define this 'own brand of democracy' as a 'balancedgovernment', where power is not tilted towards any family or dynasty.
Lt. Gen. Moeen is widely speculated to have compelled President Iajuddin Ahmed to relinquish the Chief Advisor's post in January 2007, which he had assumed in November 2006, after both the BNP and the AL failed to reach an agreement over a consensus candidate. Fakhruddin Ahmed is, moreover, rumoured to have been 'handpicked' as the Chief Advisor by Lt. Gen. Moeen. Sources also indicate that Moeen has successfully neutralised the President's attempts to replace him, and has also thwarted pro-President officers like Major General Razzakul Haider Chowdhury, chief of the National Security Intelligence (NSI), and Brigadier General Abu Mohammad Sohel, chief of the President's Guard Regiment. The dominance of thearmy Chief in the interim administration also explains the army's overbearing presence in the reconstituted National Security Council and the Central and District-based Anti-corruption Task Forces. The decision to hang the six convicted Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) militants on March 30, almost two weeks before their anticipated date of execution, is also believed to have been backed by thearmy.
The dominance of the men in uniform in the Administration probably explains why the so called 'good intentions' of thegovernment have not included the actions of the security forces. A report of the human rights group, Odhikar indicated that, in the first three months of the state of emergency (January 12- March 12), 74 people were killed by law enforcers across the country. While 43 persons were killed by the Rapid Action Battalion, 16 were killed by the Police, six by thearmy, six by the army-led Joint Forces, two by the Navy and one by the officers of the Department of Narcotics Control. Nearly one-third of those killed were so called 'left-wing extremists'.
Freeing Bangladesh from the endemic corruption and kleptocratic politics does provide an extraordinary opportunity for national reconstruction. However, the assumed responsibility to create a new, corruption-free society by fiat, and to steer the country towards meaningful elections, is looking more improbable by the day. There are clear indications that the current situation has created opportunities for thearmy to consolidate its an vice-like hold over the Administration in a model that has an increasing resemblance to the military-political order in Pakistan. In these circumstances, it is not clear whether the Election Commission's proposed Taka 350 crore (US $51 million) project for simultaneously preparing a voter list with photographs, national identity cards and introduction of e-governance in some selected organisations, will eventually bear fruit, and lead to the restoration of a credible democracy in Bangladesh
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Bibhu Prasad Routray is Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management.Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal.
