It 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 may have our credit rating downgraded, FDI could come to a trickling stop, and the reputation of the country as an exemplary case of development may require years to repair.
What is most ironic is that it was the fallout of an escalating standoff between protesting students and the government who eventually were on the same side of the disputed issue.
What went wrong for Sheikh Hasina?
Despite her failings on the front of democratic rule, free speech, and human rights, the ex-PM made numerous contributions in the development of the country. Unfortunately, she also choseto 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 the 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 adviser to the interim government in 2006; BNP appointed the president as the chief adviser, 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 floated by this government envisaged sending into exile the feuding leaders of BNP and AL. Dr Yunus briefly launched a political pary then too. Both these events were significant in shaping her political persona and policy when she returned to power in 2009. This also led to her fallout with Dr Yunus.
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 had shepherded a socialist form of economy that was promptly dismantled by the governments that came after the change of August 15, 1975.
She capitalized on the privatized 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; the immediate need was the realization 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 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 15 years, Sheikh Hasina succeeded in many of her developmental agenda: The infrastructural development for communication and transportation, the outreach of health and educational services, the upsurge in entrepreneurial initiatives, all are markers of a galvanized population. There was surely a widening income gap but it seemed not to be perceived as formidable.
We need to recognize 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 ushered the ex-PM to the far more challenging front of hard-ball diplomacy to preserve our national sovereignty. She possibly made a choice of going slow with corruption eradication and fast with her developmental agenda.
Given her approach to foreign policy, perhaps she was acutely aware of her vulnerability and hence had 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. Of course, now it is too late.
Firing at student protesters needs to be investigated by the UN as has been variously demanded. This really needs to be done urgently and transparently. We all knew that the death of even one student in Bangladesh was a ticking time bomb that would explode eventually and bring the establishment down sooner or later; this is all there in our history.
Where does Bangladesh go now?
It appears that it will be difficult for the interim government to pursue a non-aligned foreign policy like Hasina. 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 from this country; the nation celebrates his achievement and has high hopes.
However, we need also recognize that he is already indebted to the western bloc for their advocacy on his behalf with the previous government. He may already be 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 Hilary Clinton, a vocal supporter of Israeli aggression in Gaza, complicates the matter further.
Indeed, the promise of a sustainable peace in the near future seems quite tenuous. The acts of vandalism and lynching that have 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 realize.
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 Bangladeshi 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 stay free of meddling.
The previous regime has left very large shoes to fill in the sectors of economic development, social welfare, and independent foreign policy. While these achievements in these areas are benchmarks for successors, the new government also has the opportunity of building benchmark legacies in the matter of transparency, integrity, equity, and human rights.
I hope our “celebrated new era” as many have tended to feel about the change, will not turn sour like that of Egypt! Turmoil is enough to realize the interests of the powers-be; our national life and history is not their concern. I hope we, as a nation, will learn to give leaders their due, remember them for what good they have done for us, and not just fracture ourselves fighting over their failures.
Running a government is not a stroll on the pier, and it only gets tougher.
Dr Farooq Sheikh is an Associate Professor at SUNY Geneseo, USA.