Dramatic contrasts between 2014 and next elections

"The BNP's current movement, drawing support from both grassroots and foreign powers, has ignited a new wave of resistance, unlike any seen since the 1971 liberation. With the AL regime increasingly isolated and the nation's economic struggles mounting, Bangladesh stands on the brink of dramatic change."

BANGLADESH’S next general election is around the corner. The country was in flames at this stage of the 2014 election. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, with Jamaat-e-Islami as the ally, was engaged in a movement in Dhaka and across the country to force the AL regime to hold the election under the caretaker government system. The AL-led regime, after coming to power in January 2009, annulled the 13th, or the caretaker government, amendment that it had forced the BNP to adopt in its 1991–96 term and adopted the 15th amendment as the constitutional blueprint for its BAKSAL or one-party dictatorial rule.

The Awami League is still in power but not democratically. The last two elections were controversially held under the also controversial 15th amendment. The 2014 election, which the BNP/opposition boycotted to expose the 15th amendment as the BAKSAL amendment, was controversial because no votes were cast in 154 of the 300 seats. The 2018 election was controversial as well, because the civil bureaucracy, the law enforcement agencies and the ruling party supporters, with the Election Commission in the role of the facilitator, stuffed ballot boxes for the ruling party candidates the midnight before the polling day. The ruling party, thus, won 293 seats but the 2018 general election earned the nickname of ‘midnight election.’

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party is leading the opposition movement once again to stop the regime from holding the country’s next general election for its 12th national parliament for stealing the political rights of the people once again as it did in 2014 and 2018. This time, things are, however, dramatically different. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party is leading this movement with a different strategy, with almost all the opposition forces with it but without any formal alliance. More importantly, the international environment that had helped the Awami League to steal the 2014 and 2018 elections has turned on its head against the Awami League.

The new strategy of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party has successfully encouraged and ensured the opposition parties and forces into a simultaneous one-point movement to force the ruling party that they all believe is in power illegitimately to stand down to pave the way for the next general election under a neutral-non-party government. The movement has already energised the opposition like no other movement since the liberation war of 1971. This movement has been given the catchy nickname of ‘jugapat andolan.’

The movement’s strategy of bringing the regime down by a one-point united strategy but without any grand alliance has allowed the Bangladesh Nationalist Party to break its alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami. The strategy has also allowed the movement to free itself from the differences that these parties have among themselves in other matters to focus with single-minded devotion and commitment to one all-encompassing goal — to bring the illegal and anti-democratic AL regime down at any cost.

The new strategy of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party is, thus, strategically and dramatically different from its movement leading to 2014. It is also dramatically different from 2014 because of the economic factors in the current movement. The 2013–2014 movement was all about politics, democracy and human rights. The present movement is also for these issues that have deteriorated massively meanwhile. The present movement has been massively energised because it has included in it the dramatic downward slide in lives of masses that has now become intolerable.

The economic slide came, ironically, while the regime was gaga from its self-acclaimed achievements. The regime’s sycophant economists claimed fabulous economic developments that they said made Bangladesh a role model for developing countries. The regime’s political leaders believed the claim and proudly spread through the captive media that the country had reached Singapore in economic development.

The Russian invasion came amid the gaga mood of the regime. The invasion turned the world’s economy on its head. Its impact was devastating for developing countries. The rising price of oil sent their economies spiralling down. The impact in Bangladesh was in the astronomical rise of prices of essential goods that pushed the masses to the edge. They were unable to take the toxic mix of political deprivations since the AL regime came to power in 2009 with the economic miseries that befell them following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party took up their cause which was an answer to their prayers. The masses thus joined the BNP’s ongoing movement with the regime insensitive towards their miseries that dramatically energised the BNP’s movement.

The BNP’s ongoing movement also received the helping hand of the heavens in two major ways. The first was the change from president Donald Trump to president Joe Biden and the Biden administration’s decision to make human rights and democracy the bedrock of its foreign policy to regain the slipping US leadership of the Trans-Atlantic Alliance. The change of administration did not take long to reach Bangladesh which hit the AL regime’s confidence and complacency that it would remain in power as long it wished, unexpectedly for which it was unprepared.

The second major help for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party from the heavens was the end of the war on terror in August 2021. The US-west-UN, with India in the loop, went against the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in 2013–14. They believed that it backed Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic terrorism because of its alliance with the Jamaat that paved for the Awami League the way to retain power through the controversial 2014 election. The end of the war on terror removed Islam from the radar of the US-west. With Islam out of the radar and democracy and human rights in the driver’s seat of the US foreign policy, it was not long before the AL regime came under the radar of the United States in place of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party that, meanwhile, distanced itself from Jamaat. The United States excluded Bangladesh from president Biden’s Democracy Summit held in December 8–10, 2021. At the same time, Washington imposed sanctions on the Rapid Action Battalion for serious human rights violations.

The US ambassador Richard Haas pursued these bedrock issues of the US foreign policy in its bilateral relations with Bangladesh like no previous US ambassador to Bangladesh from the moment he arrived in Dhaka in February 2022. He zeroed in on Bangladesh’s next general election and the need to hold it in a free, fair and peaceful manner with the other prerequisites that go with it as the litmus test for the satisfactory conduct of US-Bangladesh bilateral relations.

Washington, meanwhile, sent several high-level delegations from the state department and the White House in pursuit of its new foreign policy objectives, which are the same that the BNP-led opposition is pursuing in its ongoing movement against the AL regime. Washington, meanwhile, excluded Bangladesh from Biden’s Democracy Summit held in March 2023 to flag that, notwithstanding some improvements in the regime’s handling of human rights issues since the sanctions on the Rapid Action Battalion, the AL regime was hesitating to tread the democratic path wholeheartedly.

The US western allies and the UN, meanwhile, joined the US initiatives in Bangladesh as their own. They, too, zeroed in on the need for holding Bangladesh’s next general election in a free, fair, peaceful and participatory manner. The AL regime, nevertheless, did not welcome these initiatives, particularly those from Washington, because it viewed those were designed, in the words of the prime minister, to change her regime. The AL regime, however, committed, in formal meetings with US delegations that visited Bangladesh, that it would hold the next general election in a free, fair and peaceful manner. The prime minister herself made such commitments.

The regime, nevertheless, proved that its commitments to the west, to the United States in particular, were not firm. It played politics in public with the commitments. The regime’s ministers and other leaders in their public speeches flagged that the regime would not bow to the pressure of the foreign powers and that it was determined to remain in power as long as it wished, till the beginning of the 2040 decade at the least. Washington’s approach in encouraging the regime towards democracy and human rights has, nevertheless, been determined and unrelenting.

Washington introduced a new visa policy for Bangladesh in June. The new policy will ban any Bangladeshi civil servants, law enforcement personnel, election commission members, members of the judiciary, the ruling party and the opposition, who in the past interfered in a free and fair general election or would do so in any such election in the future from entering the United States. The visa policy applied to the families as well.

The new visa policy with the other steps taken by the United States since the Biden administration came to power has been clearly against the Awami League that it held as responsible for the slide in democracy, human rights and electoral rights in Bangladesh. These measures that US allies in the west and UN backed underlined a dramatic change, a U-turn, in their stand in Bangladesh compared with their stand leading to the 2014 election and during the Trump era leading to the end of the war on error.

The change helped and encouraged the Bangladesh Nationalist Party to develop a new strategy for its movement. The change also provided the Bangladesh Nationalist Party with the courage to take the new strategy to the grass roots and oppose the regime on the streets to show the regime and the foreign power how dramatically the support had shifted from the regime towards it. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s 10 divisional rallies in October–December 2022 were the fruits of this strategy. These rallies were a huge success. They underlined that in Bangladesh, power at the grass roots had dramatically shifted against the regime.

These rallies attracted people not just from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the majority of the opposition parties but from the masses. They attended these rallies in a humongous number, overcoming all conceivable and inconceivable obstacles, including stoppage of all means of public transport except the private ones that were also not allowed to operate freely. A good number of people were killed by the police to discourage people from attending these rallies.

The main success of these rallies which were peaceful in the face of the gravest of provocation was that they defeated fear which was the regime’s main weapon since 2009 to keep the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the opposition cornered. These rallies also flagged clearly that the opposition leaders and the grass roots were no longer afraid of arrests, another formidable weapon of the regime against the opposition. The dramatic drop in enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings because of the US sanctions on the Rapid Action Battalion and the new US visa policy helped to energise the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s current movement dramatically in comparison with its 2014 movement.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, meanwhile, also flagged and explained to the people and the foreign powers what it was unable to do leading to the 2014 election for various reasons that the Awami League adopted the 15th amendment in June 2011 as the constitutional guarantee of its BAKSAL vision that it had tried to establish in its 1972–75 term and failed with disastrous consequences. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party exposed as daylight that the 15th amendment did not even have the proverbial Achilles’ heel to bring it down.

The 15th amendment assured that the incumbent prime minister would head the election-time government. It kept the parliament in office during the time of election, unheard in a national election in a parliamentary anywhere. The AL regime, with the adoption of the 15th amendment, politicised the Election Commission, the civil bureaucracy and the law enforcement agencies to the extent that they now, without even attempting to hide it, work during the general elections as well as any other national election as activists of the Awami League. They underlined this with the 2014 and 2018 elections. The civil administration and the law enforcement agencies openly claimed that the Awami League had won these elections because of them.

India’s role in the BNP’s present movement against the AL regime compared with its role in 2013–2014 has been a game changer. India directly and nakedly interfered in Bangladesh’s general election in in 2014 for the Awami League. India’s foreign secretary Sujata Singh visited Dhaka ahead of that election, treated Bangladesh like an Indian state and arm-twisted president Ershad’s Jatiya Party that was the third party to participate in the election that the Awami League would not have been able to hold on its own. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party would have won its caretaker government demand like the Awami League had in the BNP’s 1991–96 term. Bangladesh would have been on the path of democracy and a dark chapter on India-Bangladesh relations would not have been written.

The BJP rule that began in 2014 did not show the AL regime anything like the warmth that the Congress showed that, nevertheless, continued till Pranab Mukherjee retired as India’s president in 2017. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s warmth for Bangladesh and the AL regime cooled thereafter mainly because the Bharatiya Janata Party found better value in bashing Bangladesh as a Muslim-majority country to energise its Hindutva base instead of treating Bangladesh as a friendly country, under the Awami League, a historical friend of India.

India remained aloof in the Awami League’s present crisis. At the India-US summit this June, the Indian prime minister reaffirmed and embraced the shared values of their two countries for ‘freedom, democracy, human rights, inclusion, pluralism, and equal opportunities for all citizens.’ India with this commitment dropped the AL regime like a hot potato. It can now come to the AL regime’s assistance by breaking its commitment at the US-India summit. This is extremely unlikely because India’s national interests of far greater importance than its relations with Bangladesh would not allow it to break the commitment.

China and Russia have been the only foreign powers that issued statements that favoured the AL regime. Their statements were more in line with their stand against the United States which criticises both for the violation of human rights and democracy. They warned the United States against interfering in Bangladesh’s sovereignty on pretexts of democracy and human rights because the United States does the same to them for violating human rights and democracy in their respective countries.

China, with this stand, nevertheless, reminded many in Bangladesh that it opposed Bangladesh’s liberation and its UN membership even after Pakistan had recognised Bangladesh. Ironically, China went into denial to back the Awami League because it was the Bangladesh Nationalist Party that normalised relations with it after diplomatic relations had been established in 1975 and helped the people of Bangladesh to forget China’s 1971 role. China’s present stand to back the AL-led regime has a lot to do with its anger upon the Bangladesh Nationalist Party for allowing Taiwan a trade office in Dhaka during its 2001–2006 rule.

The USSR, unlike China, supported Bangladesh’s liberation war which was for democracy and human rights, massively. Russia as its successor state of the USSR, thus, supported the AL regime at a time when it is under the radar of the west and the United Nations for the violation of human rights and democracy. Russia and China, notwithstanding their backing for the AL regime, are not in the habit of interfering in a country’s internal affairs to salvage it as the United States, west or India. Therefore, their support for the AL regime may not be of help to it to remain in power.

The current BNP-led opposition movement, unlike its movement in 2013–2014, thus, has wide support of foreign powers. The BNP’s street movement is now attracting people like pins to the magnet and getting stronger by the day since its successful divisional rallies. Its Maha Samabesh on June 27 underlined it all. The Maha Samabesh surpassed, in number and intensity, all other political movements since the AwamI League’s historic March 7, 1971 meeting that was held without obstruction of any kind. The BNP’s Maha Samabesh was obstructed by law enforcement agencies and AL activists. It would have surpassed the historic March 7, 1971 meeting without these obstructions.

The Awami League has been in power for 14 years. It held power for 10 of these years through two controversial elections. Another term through another controversial election would give it two decades. This can happen in a rule by civilians only by the use of naked force. The AL regime has, meanwhile, exhausted all its cards with which it tried to rationalise its unusually long stay in power. It claims that it alone represents the spirit of 1971 and that the opposition forces are anti-liberation and pro-terrorist have become stale because of the blatantly fascist means that are the anthesis of the spirit of 1971 that it uses to remain in power.

Its economic development card has become an embarrassment in the face of the mounting economic miseries of the masses. The plundering and looting of the economy, the flight of humongous amounts of capital by illegal means and mind-boggling corruption are now common knowledge. The foreign exchange reserves, a principal index of the regime’s claim of economic miracles, plummeted from $48 billion and rising a year ago to below $24 and falling at present which raised a huge red flag for the economy. A Hollywood documentary underlined it all. The documentary was about the 2016 heist in Bangladesh Bank, the only instance of such an incident in a central bank of a sovereign nation. The central bank is the symbol of the economic sovereignty of an independent country.

The BNP-led jugapat andolan has, thus, the potential to reach its goal. The US-led west and the United Nations have visibly turned against the AL regime. India’s change from its 2014 role has been for the Awami League, its biggest disappointment. China and Russia’s support have been more a dig at the United States than a firm support to become any kind of lifeline for the regime. These two powers in any case do not have a history of salvaging any regime anywhere by direct intervention. The AL regime which had all foreign powers besides its side leading to the 2014 election now stands alone to face the BNP-led movement with he deteriorating state of the economy adding a new dimension to the regime’s worries.

The BNP-led opposition’s present movement is, thus, dramatically and qualitatively different from the 2014 movement and has the potential to succeed. The movement is also far stronger than the Awami League’s 1991-96 movement for the same that the BNP regime accepted for the sake of the country, adopted the 13th or the caretaker government amendment, gave election under it and lost. The Awami League has a duty to the nation to do what the Bangladesh Nationalist Party did in 1996 if it loves the nation. Its other option would be too dangerous even to contemplate although, unfortunately, that is where the Awami League is leading the country.

 (This article was originally published in New Age)