Navigating post-Hasina Bangladesh: Challenges and future prospects

Despite her significant failures in democratic rule, free speech, and human rights, the ex-PM Hasina makes notable contributions to Bangladesh's development

Sheikh Hasina has resigned, and we are yet again in unchartered waters. A new interim government is in the making. The protesting students are still dictating the terms. Where do we stand today and where are we headed?

This is unfortunate that we have yet again to navigate through the turbulent waters of an abrupt change, and changes such as this are very costly to the nation. We will certainly have our credit rating downgraded, FDI will certainly come to a trickling stop, and the reputation of the country as an exemplary case of development will take a deep dent requiring years to repair. What is most ironic is that it was the fallout of an escalating standoff between protesting students and the government who were both on the same side of the disputed issue. The High Court ruled to restore the job quota system. The students descended in the streets to protest this, and the government went to the Supreme Court to appeal the verdict: where is the conflict? In 2018 the government had scaled down the quota system in response to students’ demand. So, why target the government at all? This is an irony of historical proportions! Recall the Oscar winning movie, “Wag the Dog”: were the events on streets enacted by design to engender an anti-govt public narrative? There are surely some secret bodies buried in the backyard that will be exhumed some day!

To be fair, despite her indefensible failures on the front of democratic rule, free speech and human rights, the ex-PM made numerous landmark contributions in the development of the country: she was committed and had a vision. Unfortunately, she also had to embrace party and business leaders who were bent on enriching themselves at national cost: the stench of a few rotten apples surely lends the feel of rottenness to the whole basket! In her earlier days she was described by western media as an icon of democracy but in recent years she was variously described as the iron lady, a dictator and an autocrat. There are two significant events that might have transformed her; there are certainly some others. First was the grenade attack on the AL meeting in 2004 meant to assassinate her; some top tier leaders of the AL died, and she narrowly escaped. This convinced her that the anti-liberation forces were still hot on their mission of eliminating her family. The second was the crisis over the appointment of the chief advisor to the Interim government in 2006; BNP appointed the president as the chief advisor, which the AL opposed for fear of election rigging in favour of BNP; after all he was a BNP appointee. This resulted in a standoff, and the consequent military intervention to set up an interim government. The minus-two formula was floated by this government envisaged sending in exile the feuding lady-leaders of BNP and AL and bringing in Muhammad Yunus as a candidate. Both these events were significant in shaping her political persona and policy when she returned to power in 2009. This also led to the fallout between Dr Yunus and the ex-PM.

The PM’s outreach to businessmen was the result of her party’s continuous struggle with cash. In the earlier years Awami League was quite cash strapped compared to its political opponents. She tackled the problem by co-opting businessmen and giving them wider latitude than any of the previous AL governments; Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had shepherded a socialistic form of economy that was promptly dismantled by the governments that came after the change of Aug 15, 1975. She capitalised on the privatised economic sector bequeathed to her by previous governments and went headlong in promoting privately owned businesses. I do not doubt for a moment that the ex-PM knew it was going to embroil her government in corruption, but in her reckoning it was only temporary and could be slowly reversed later; the immediate need was the realisation of her father’s dream of a Golden Bengal, which when translated in economic terms would be “a Bengal of high productivity and high per capita gross domestic product or GDP.” She also felt that time was running out on her, and that she needed to be fast paced in her development agenda before she was overtaken by death, natural or unnatural; she did not discount the latter as a real possibility.

In her fifteen years, Hasina spectacularly succeeded in her developmental agenda: the infrastructural development for communication and transportation, the outreach of health and educational services, the upsurge in entrepreneurial initiatives, all are unmistakable markers of a galvanised population. There was surely a widening income gap but it seemed not to be perceived as formidable---every young man or woman had this faith that they could be just as rich someday, which is why there was a spike in entrepreneurial spirit in the young generation. I had undergraduate students in my class who were operating their own businesses and pursuing education at a private university: this is better than anything I have witnessed in the US. It is truly a transformed country!

We must recognise that it is very difficult for a leader to simultaneously fight the battles for economic development on one front and fight the battles against corruption at another; Bangladesh’s rising strategic importance in the emerging new global order delivered the ex-PM at the far more challenging front of hard-ball diplomacy to preserve our national sovereignty---no other PM in our history has had such a heaped plate! I am inclined to believe that the ex-PM did not condone crime; she just put her crime- and corruption-fighting battles as end projects of her tenure. She made a choice of going slow with corruption eradication and fast with her developmental agenda. A government as intransigent as that of Hasina in maintaining national sovereignty and independent foreign policy is a thorn on the side for superpowers and aspiring superpowers alike; her demise was a foregone conclusion. Perhaps she was acutely aware of her vulnerability and hence the wide network of secret security apparatus and the extra judicial killings. What she could have done was to form a “national council of foreign relations” taking members of all political parties in order that her actions had the endorsement of ALL political parties in precluding or at least controlling interference from outside. Alas it is too late!

Firing at student protestors remains an intriguing truth from recent history; it needs to be investigated by the United Nations as has been variously demanded; the ex-PM is equally vocal in favour of an investigation. This really needs to be done urgently and transparently. We all know that death of even one student in Bangladesh is a ticking timebomb destined to bring the establishment down sooner or later; this is all there in our history. The allegation that the ex-PM ordered the mayhem is difficult to reconcile with her background as a student leader herself with first-hand experience with police brutality, and even more so, as someone who had lost almost entire family to a brutal massacre. The truth is this tragic episode needs to be excavated.

Bangladesh’s journey as an independent state started tentatively in the territory of sovereignty: the question of sovereignty has dogged us perniciously in our domestic politics. The events surrounding our independence with the diplomatic ties and dependencies endangered by those were not collectively embraced by our politicians. On the contrary, new political parties defined their patriotic stance by exploiting the diplomatic constraints of the incumbent government; they even patronised emergence of insurgent groups. These parties sought constituency using the cheap but dangerous tactic of accusing the government of subservience to India. Bangabandhu’s first foreign policy statement that Bangladesh will be the Switzerland of the East, was a goal with a long road: it needed economic growth, domestic security and stability and a robust diplomatic base. He worked quietly but unmistakably towards that goal; he believed in taking small steps without destabilising the ship. He had the foresight and political mettle. President Ziaur Rahman, one of our valiant war heroes, was courageous as much, but his propulsion to power got him tangled with external sponsors from whom he could not ever extricate himself. And lately, the ex-PM demonstrated the courage to pursue sovereignty; it is not a straightforward choice demanding careful and strategic handling. Because of the USA’s documented complicity in the assassination of Bangabandhu, it had a morally weak position in its dealing with the ex-PM. She took advantage of her moral high ground and worked hard to preserve our national sovereignty, pursuing a balanced and non-aligned foreign policy; this irked both the US and India; each, however, sought a different solution.

It appears that it will be difficult for the interim government to pursue a non-aligned foreign policy like her. In an apparent reversal of fortunes by karmic forces, Dr Yunus now heads the interim government. He is our national pride for being the first Nobel laureate; the nation celebrates his achievement and has high hopes from him. However, we need also recognise that he is already indebted to the Western block for their advocacy on his behalf with the previous government; even more, there is the larger-than-life specter of “Clintons’ lobbying” for his Nobel Prize. So, he is already too beholden to the west to act independently on the global stage. In a country where there is overwhelming sympathy for the Palestinians, his close association with Hillary Clinton, a vocal supporter of Israeli aggression in Gaza, complicates the matter even further. Indeed, the promise of a sustainable peace in near future seems quite tenuous. The acts of vandalism and lynching that followed will likely have a backlash. By all appearances, the state of internal security is teetering on a cliff’s edge.

The recent protests and what followed have exacted an enormous cost on the nation: besides the cost of lives and property, there are financial costs that will soon show up in our treasury books. Freedom from corruption is not an easy goal to realise. As has been repeated so many times on our soil, the soldiers of honesty are soldiers so long as they are not in the seat of power. Once they are there, they collapse into the same old mold. Eradication of corruption is a slow evolutionary process; abrupt political change has never been a remedy anywhere. No BD leader, or for that matter, any in South Asia, will ride away on a bicycle after his/her term, not yet!

I hope we will enter a new era where corruption of political party men would be controlled, effectiveness of government leaders measured with transparency, and most critical of all, the history of struggle and liberation will stay free of meddling. The ex-PM has left very large shoes to fill in the sectors of economic development, social welfare and independent foreign policy. Her achievements in these areas will serve as benchmarks for her successors; they will have the opportunity of building benchmark legacies in the matter of democratic processes, transparency and integrity of governance, equity and human rights. The successors will have to prove their commitment to an independent foreign policy as the ex-PM had pursued; the nation will be on the watch! I hope our “celebrated new era”, as many have tended to describe the change, will not turn sour like that of Egypt! Turmoil is enough to realise the interests of the powers-be; our national life and history is not their concern.

Regardless, I hope we, as a nation, will learn to give our heroes their due, remember them for what good they have done for us, and not fracture ourselves fighting over their failures. Running a government is not a stroll on the pier, and it gets tougher if you are a true patriot. Let us work to build ourselves as a nation of vision and mission, and together bathe all our heroes in honey and milk to celebrate their memories for inspiration and strength.

[Faruk Sheikh teaches at the State University of New York at Genesco]