Sheikh Hasina, the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, who is now sheltered in India after fleeing Bangladesh on August 5, is presumably using a scheme of intentionally leaked phone conversations to maintain her public communications with the people she left behind.
These strategic leaks are novel in light of Hasina's personal history with Bangladesh, and are shameless given the recurrence of the releases, while the game plan remains quite simple and cheap to execute.
The communication scheme goes like this: One random, low-level party leader calls Hasina from some part of the world which includes upazila-level party men in Bangladesh. Then the conversation will be recorded by that junior partner at his end. Given the audio quality differential, where only Hasina's voice sounds telephonic while the voice on the other end sounds normal, it is certain these calls are not intelligence agency interceptions where both ends of the conversation audio should sound telephonic.
Once the call recording is complete, the product is released to compliant media, besides being uploaded to social media, where they usually go viral.
Myriad social media accounts including popular media pages belonging to all stripes of Bangladesh's political spectrum then amplify the conversation, given the obvious popular curiosity.
Sheikh Hasina is far from being normalized in the Bangladeshi media yet. Her media interviews are not carried out by any established media. Even known YouTube channels and popular personalities are inaccessible to Hasina at the moment. It is also possible as a condition for her stay in India, she is under some form of soft gag order to not participate in formal media appearances.
Avoiding formal media interactions, some parts of these leaked phone conversations maintain the articulative ornaments of the absconded leader which she no longer can release through traditional media. Yet, parts of these conversations are shocking enough to be deemed worthy for the print media.
That is where the effectiveness of the whole scheme lies.
Vitality is still the natural destiny of these calls, although there will soon be a time when Hasina will need to be increasingly shocking in her assertions just to stay relevant.
It is worthy to note that Sheikh Hasina had fled Bangladesh having been responsible for the death of more than 1,400 protesters and injuring tens of thousands. Local and international media reported that she was asking for continuation of even more brutality from her security forces, forcing the military to refuse her untenable commands in the end.
The Awami League's entire rank and file, particularly the mid to senior ranks of the party, are in hiding. This leaves the party with few local leaders on the ground.
According to an Indian media report, right after Hasina's escape from Bangladesh, there was widespread, yet publicly unexpressed anger among the party rank and file who were left in the dark all the way till the hour when Hasina finally gave up and fled. This left Awami League's party men vulnerable to political reprisal attacks amid the lawlessness that ensued right after August 5 -- the day now often called Bangladesh's “second independence” day.
These strategic phone leaks are serving the purpose in part of pseudo-interviews, and in part direct guidance about what needs to be done during this rudderless time, with exchange of mutual affections flowing and hopes intact between Hasina and her elaborate party apparatus.
The leaked conversation scheme is not without perils. For example, in Hasina's last conversation with an insignificant party man, Hasina issued veiled threats to Bangladesh's civil administration when she asked the party man to send her name and ancestral origin of the police chief of Gopalganj.
The party leader agreed to get back with the details, where the signal for Bangladesh administration is that Hasina is still gathering names for future reprisal. Hasina in fact said at one point of the conversation that “she never forgives.”
Hasina also said that she is uncertain whether the Yunus government can survive past the month of November, which many construed as a reference to the upcoming US elections where Awami League is banking on a possible Donald Trump victory. Hasina's son Joy broke into Bangladeshi media with the news that he just hired a Trump-aligned lobbyist firm.
Bangladesh has every right to be upset, while leaving India with the headache of hosting a fallen leader who is facing over 200 murder charges. The tone, content, and timing of Hasina's latest leaked conversation was nothing but a veiled threat to the current Yunus government and Bangladesh's civil bureaucracy. This, in turn, can cloud the still-delicate relationship between Bangladesh and India.
Shafquat Rabbee is a Bangladeshi-American geopolitical columnist.