BackBangladesh on trial
The ruling Awami League should have found the election due on Sunday to be tough. And yet, it has already returned to power
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The politics of Bangladesh has been dysfunctional for a long time. Assassinations and coups have interrupted democracy, and electoral democracy, when allowed to function, has produced leaders who want to do their best to undermine the processes once they are elected. And whichever party is in opposition, it thinks it is its patriotic duty to stall most initiatives the ruling party proposes. (By one count, the opposition called 50 hartals, or strikes, in 2013 alone.)
The ruling Awami League should have found the election due on Sunday to be tough: there is public discontent; the government faces allegations of corruption (the World Bank suspended aid for a bridge over the river Padma because of graft charges); street hooliganism and political violence is on the increase, with the horrendous, widely circulated image of ruling party toughs raising sticks to beat up a woman lawyer supporting the opposition; and two terrible factory disasters, in which over a thousand workers have died. Earlier this week, the opposition leader Khaleda Zia was practically under house arrest, as she was prevented from going to her office during protests.
And yet, the Awami League has already returned to power, since the opposition has boycotted the election. Awami candidates stood unopposed in as many as 154 of the 300 seats, making the voting on Sunday a ritual without much meaning.
The opposition wants a caretaker government to oversee the elections. Elections in the past had been marred by persistent allegations of vote rigging. One reason the Awami League came to power in 2009 defeating the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) was the presence of the caretaker government, whose neutrality ensured that popular will was reflected in the outcome.
To be sure, in mature democracies, governing parties don’t leave office during elections, because all parties understand that elections can go either way and play the game by its rules. Bangladesh needed this curiosity—caretaker government—precisely because ruling parties could not be trusted to run a fair election.
However, having won the 2009 elections with an overwhelming majority, (with 49% vote, it won 230 seats; with 33% vote, the BNP won only 30 seats because of the first-past-the-post system) the Awami League consolidated its hold, by passing an amendment doing away with caretaker governments. Once the boycott threat loomed, the Awami League did invite the opposition to join an interim government leading up to the elections, but the opposition rejected that.
And then there is the war crime tribunal. In 2009, the Awami League had promised to hold to account individuals accused of war crimes during Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971. This captured the public imagination as many voters were exasperated by the immunity some collaborators had enjoyed and the impunity with which they operated.
While an overwhelming majority of Bangladeshis had supported independence from Pakistan, some (in particular, members of the Jamaat-e-Islami party) clung to the idea of a united Pakistan, and they, and militia groups Al-Badr and Al-Shams, collaborated with the Pakistani army during the nine-month conflict in which hundreds of thousands of people died.
The Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal indicted 11 men, nine from the Jamaat and two from the BNP. One of the convicted Jamaat leaders was executed in December. The tribunal has been criticized over how it is run: the government amended the law so that the prosecution could press for death penalty, bowing to demonstrators who protested against a life-term verdict as being too light; the tribunal’s presiding judge has had to step down after leaked phone conversations appeared to suggest that he was talking to external activists and advisers who sought to influence his thinking; defence lawyers have complained of being treated unfairly; and one crucial witness, Shukho Ranjan Bali, who changed his testimony, was reportedly abducted at the courthouse, and later found in an Indian jail—the mystery surrounding his disappearance never explained.
While the trials perform a necessary function—there can be no statute of limitations in cases involving crimes against humanity or genocide—how justice is delivered is as important as the delivery of justice. And if the tribunal process ends up casting the Jamaat leaders (who do have a case to answer) as martyrs, it will make the trial look like a political witch-hunt, which it was never meant to be.
A second term may grant Sheikh Hasina Wajed the time and opportunity to bring the trials to a close. But instability will follow, with possibly all remaining leaders convicted of war crimes being executed, angering fundamentalists; voters restless and unhappy with the Awami League’s performance are now frustrated because half the population does not get to vote; and an outraged opposition, now bent upon revenge, is threatening that the country’s history will continue to get written in blood.
Salil Tripathi is a writer based in London. Your comments are welcome at salil@livemint.com.
To read Salil Tripathi’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/saliltripathi
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