The Great Regression

THE COLLAPSE OF THE Awami League government in Bangladesh on August 5 was as sudden as it was chaotic. Following nearly a month of agitation by students against a quota system in government services, it had by early August become obvious that the movement had been commandeered by extremists and had moved to a position where it was the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that was being demanded.

It would be worthwhile arguing that the government might have survived, albeit after much more blood had flowed on the streets, if the country’s army had stood behind it. But when the military decided not to shoot demonstrators, it was clear that Sheikh Hasina had little option but to give in to the demand for her resignation. And yet, the record speaks of her determination to stay on, for having been in power for 15 years she certainly found it hard to acknowledge the fact that the ground had moved from under her government.

On August 5, circumstances shaped up in bizarre fashion. It was given out by General Waker-uz-Zaman, the army chief, that the prime minister had resigned and was on her way to India. Obviously, the constitutional procedure of the head of government personally submitting her resignation to President Mohammed Shahabuddin was not followed, for Sheikh Hasina was given no more than 45 minutes to vacate her official residence Ganabhaban and leave the country. What has been pretty disturbing is the fact that no letter of resignation has so far been produced as evidence that Sheikh Hasina actually submitted her resignation as head of government.

In alignment with the resignation story has come the false narrative from anti-Awami League quarters that Sheikh Hasina fled the country on August 5. The reality is quite different. She and her younger sister Sheikh Rehana were escorted by the army to a helipad, a helicopter taking them to a C-130 military aircraft for their onward journey to Delhi. Rather intriguingly, a number of newspapers and other media outlets in Bangladesh have persisted in referring to the prime minister’s flight out of the country as an escape.

The chain of events which has defined a post-Hasina Bangladesh does not make for comfortable reading. Where the president, under the constitution, ought to have appointed a successor to Sheikh Hasina, it was an entirely different proposition which Bangladesh’s people were made to witness. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate whose relations with Sheikh Hasina had been fraught for the past many years and who had been charged by the Awami League government over tax evasion, flew in from Paris, where he had been on a visit, to take over on August 8 as chief adviser of a new interim government. Yunus quickly put in place a council of advisers comprising a good number of individuals involved with NGOs and others. Surprisingly, the council included two students involved in the anti-government agitation between mid-July and early August.

A particular question asked since August relates to the legitimacy of the Yunus administration. The constitutional provision which in the past was a guarantee of transfer of power by a political government to a caretaker administration followed by free and fair elections, indeed of democracy being put back on the rails if there were reasons to conclude it had been dam­aged by the party lately in power, was annulled by the Awami League in 2011. As such, the induction of the Yunus adminis­tration continues to raise questions about the validity of the measure. The situation is one which has begun to raise hackles in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which had quite imagined that the departure of the Awami League from power would smoothen its path to political authority. BNP has been out of power since October 2006, which is why it is understand­able why it is impatient to become the party of government once again.

But that is where serious problems come in. In his first re­marks to the media on August 5, the army chief had mentioned that he had been consulting political leaders on the measures to be adopted following the fall of the Sheikh Hasina govern­ment. The first political leader he spoke of as being present at the meeting with him was the chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a party associated with the atrocities committed by the occupa­tion Pakistan army of 1971 and which ironically was finally banned by the Awami League government only days before the political change of early August. In the more than one month which has gone by since, the cadres of Jamaat have had a field day making their presence felt all across Bangladesh. The earli­est indications of the party beginning to flex its muscles came moments after Sheikh Hasina’s departure for Delhi.

Extremist violence erupted all across Dhaka. Mobs vandalised Ganabhaban, making off with nearly every item—sofas, ceiling fans, air conditioners, saris, and even fowl the departed prime minister had nurtured at her official residence. The worst was yet to be, though. And it came through the torching of the museum dedicated to the memory of Bangladesh’s founder Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi. The struc­ture, which had been the home of Sheikh Mujib and his family and where Mujib and most of his family were assassinated by renegade soldiers on August 15, 1975, was a potent symbol of Bangladesh’s tumultuous history in that it was from this home that Mujib charted the course of the movement that was to lead to the country’s liberation from Pakistan in December 1971. Trans­formed into a museum by Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana, Mujib’s surviving children, in 1994, 32 Dhanmondi, as the resi­dence has popularly been known, was a place of pilgrimage for Bangladesh’s people. The torching of it sent shock waves all over the country. It was an ominous sign of the darkness ahead.

Shockingly, none of the nation’s security organisations took any measure to protect it and Ganabhaban. Neither was any step taken to prevent vandalism of statues, murals and structures set up to commemorate the War of Liberation throughout the country. Neither Yunus nor any of his advisers felt it necessary to condemn the anarchy centred round such historical spots. On the 49th anniversary of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s death on August 15, a day which had for the past 15 years been observed as a national day of mourning, people were not permitted to visit his ravaged home and pay tribute to his memory. The entire area was occupied by the followers of the students’ movement who in the evening engaged in the ugly spectacle of taking part in a lungi dance—based on a song from a Hindi movie—a circumstance the new people in power did nothing to prevent. But a month later in September, for the first time in independent Bangladesh’s history, a group of people or­ganised a seminar on the life of Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah at the National Press Club in Dhaka. Who autho­rised the seminar or why the new regime did nothing to stop it from taking place has not been made known to the country.

THE HARD TRUTH today is that Bangladesh has gone into regression, which militates against its history and heritage. The Yunus administration has set up six commissions to bring about reforms in various sectors which were certainly negatively affected by the Awami League government. Howev­er, given the absence of parliament, which was dissolved by the president in the aftermath of the August 5 change, it is not clear how reforms, assuming they are proposed, will be provided constitutional cover. A senior leader of BNP has already made it known that the task before the interim government is to sched­ule new elections and that reforms will be decided upon by the incoming parliament. Jamaat, which has historically been an ally of BNP, is playing a shrewd role knowing that it holds sway at the moment. As for the Awami League, many of its ministers and other functionaries are either in prison or fugitives.

And that is not all. The irony of the situation could not be more pronounced. Where the anti-Hasina elements have over the years demanded the freedom of the media, and rightly so, conditions in the Yunus era have palpably worsened for journalists. Cases, many of them related to murder, have been filed against media personalities who were close to the Hasina government. A journalist couple about to board a flight to France were placed under arrest and presented in court, where they were remanded in a case of murder. The National Press Club saw its president and general secretary summarily replaced by new people. Many of those arrested among political figures were treated to indignities of various sorts. Their hands were tied by rope as they were hauled into court, where they were pelted with shoes and eggs by anti-Awami League lawyers. In a number of instances, the arrestees had no recourse to legal representation in court. A former judge of the high court was apprehended while trying to flee to India and subsequently subjected to severe mob beating, an assault which left his testicles damaged.

On the diplomatic front, a clear deterioration in ties with India has been a pronounced factor since Sheikh Hasina’s ouster. Demands continue to be made for her extradition from Delhi in order for her to face the scores of cases filed against her for murder. In a recent interview with an Indian media outlet, Yunus warned Sheikh Hasina to maintain silence rather than make any statement. That surprised political observers. Meanwhile, the Pakistan high commissioner in Dhaka has been pretty busy meeting the new people in power, offering various forms of cooperation Dhaka and Islamabad could mutually promote. What has also been a matter of surprise is that hardly any news reports have been there on the killing of innumerable Awami League activists and the vandalisation of their homes in the interior of the country since the end of the Sheikh Hasina government. Adding to the chaos have been demands made by communal elements for a change in Bangladesh’s national flag and anthem. The outcome of such outrage has been well-organ­ised moves by Bangladeshis both in the country and overseas to engage in collective renditions of ‘Amar Shonar Bangla (My Golden Bengal)’ the Tagore song which has been Bangladesh’s national anthem since 1971.

The issue of the Hindu minority, a group in Bangladesh subjected to violence every time secular politics has been in retreat, remains a concern despite Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call that the new regime in Dhaka must ensure its security. In recent weeks, Hindus have gone on the of­fensive, making it known through well-attended rallies in Chit­tagong and Dhaka that they will no more allow themselves to be subjected to majoritarian assault on their lives, homes and property. Add to that the attempts by religious fanatics to impose Wahhabism in the country in the past few weeks. In a country with a rich tradition of upholding spirituality, mobs of fanatics have gone around desecrating the shrines of Sufis and saints in various regions. The new government has warned of action against those involved, but the damage has already been done to a number of shrines all over the country.

The economy is in dire straits, a reality the interim govern­ment is fully aware of and worried about. Education has been in free fall with students at schools, colleges and universities tak­ing on themselves the role of vigilantes against their teachers, compelling them to resign by verbally abusing them. Whole­sale changes have been effected in the offices of university vice chancellors, provosts and other officials. In the civil admin­istration, unprecedented changes have occurred. The higher judiciary has been thoroughly recast, with a new chief justice of the Supreme Court taking over. A good number of senior army officers have either been sacked or retired. There is little ques­tion that Bangladesh, and with it the Yunus administration, are going through hard times. Workers in the garments sector have been on strike, posing a danger to the country’s exports. Yunus and his advisers certainly have their hands full. Whether they can preside over the transition to a new political system, one which underscores democracy and secular politics, remains to be seen. The difficulty is not merely one of political legitimacy but also one where students continue to exercise inordinate influence on the administration. Besides, it is a truism that no one in the interim government has previously had any experi­ence in governance at the higher levels, which makes matters difficult for the men and women holding power at present.

The country is in clear need of a political roadmap to the future. It does not help that a number of senior editors of newspapers, all members of the Editors’ Council, who met Yunus sometime ago suggested that he and his regime remain in office for anywhere between two and three years in order to complete the process of reforms desired by the nation. The legitimacy question was far from their minds.

It will be recalled that the last army-backed caretaker government, in office between January 2007 and January 2009, lost public support through its attempts to stay in office by an adoption of a so-called minus-two formula aimed at driving Sheikh Hasina and BNP’s Khaleda Zia from politics for good. The consequences were unhappy for the soldiers and the civil­ians they had placed in power.

The Yunus regime has been on shaky ground since it was installed in early August. That is a good reason why it should begin exploring the possibility of talks with the Awami League and BNP on the path to a political and constitutional future for the country. It is immaterial whether foreign powers— Donald Lu, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, has been in Dhaka of late—are support­ive of the new administration.

In Bangladesh’s history, its people have consistently mattered, be it during the country’s War of Liberation and in the times following the murder of its independence leaders between August and November 1975. Bengalis, while initially in a mood of welcome towards administrations replacing autocratic or undemocratic regimes, have eventually served warning to the new men and women in power at the point that they have outstayed their welcome.

It is a lesson Yunus and his team will ignore at their peril.

BangladeshGeneral Waker-Uz-ZamanHindusMohammed ShahabuddinMuhammad Yunusnew government