Sheikh Hasina Wazed has brought the best of times and the worst of times to Bangladesh. In her 15 years of consecutive rule as prime minister, extreme poverty rates have halved and per-capita GDP has grown by more than 300%. This impressive performance has been undermined by the emergence of a one‑party state, a process accelerated by anti‑government protests against escalating prices last year. Human Rights Watch warned in November that opposition leaders and supporters were being jailed, and even killed, ahead of the general elections that took place last weekend.
With the main opposition party – the Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) – boycotting the poll, Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party swept back into power. It was a hollow victory as just four in 10 voters turned out. Democracy lost out at the beginning of the year when 80 nations are scheduled to go to the polls. The election was neither free nor fair, as London and Washington pointed out. Yet Dhaka has friends in both India and China, which welcomed Sheikh Hasina’s win.
Bangladesh broke free of military rule in the 1990s to become an electoral democracy. Its manufacturing and textile sectors have flourished, while it has better life expectancy and female employment than its larger neighbour India. Yet this success has come despite its politics. Both Bangladesh’s main parties act not like a government and a loyal opposition, but as warring ideological heirs of the independence movement that gave birth to the nation. Khaleda Zia, the BNP leader and former prime minister, is ailing and under house arrest. Her allies are either jailed or in exile. Sheikh Hasina took power in 2008 after a stint behind bars.
The prime minister’s authoritarian turn, worryingly, may have gone beyond traditional political rivalries and into the realm of civil society, which many experts see as the reason behind Bangladesh’s success. In a nation born in crisis – cyclone, civil war, famine – it was non-governmental organiations (NGOs), more than fractious politicians, that engaged with the acute issues of poverty, hunger and jobs. The country is home to the largest NGO in the world, BRAC, with a global footprint and an annual income of more than $1bn.
Alarm bells rang loudly just ahead of the elections when Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus was convicted of violating Bangladesh’s labour laws. Last summer 170 world figures – including Barack Obama – had called for an end to Mr Yunus’s “continuous judicial harassment” saying that any “thorough” legal review would lead to his acquittal. However the 83-year-old, credited with lifting millions out of poverty with his microfinance bank, Grameen, has been a marked man ever since the prime minister accused him of “sucking blood from the poor”.
A “winner takes all” mentality doesn’t work in a parliamentary democracy. There must be mutual respect between government and opposition, so that the latter can hold the former to account without taking to the streets. Sheikh Hasina is 76. The BNP’s Ms Zia is 78. Both must realise their country will suffer if it continues in the direction it is going. Better surely for both to start reaching out. The government must lift its climate of fear and the opposition re-engage constructively. In a society as complex as Bangladesh, where competing demands need to be reconciled peacefully, it would be foolish to prize autocracy over long‑term democratic stability.
