Looking Back 2019 Democracy in peril: observers

The nation has passed another year without functional democracy and there is no hope of immediate improvement in the situation as the country’s electoral process has almost been destroyed over the last few years, said politicians and governance campaigners.

They said that there was a scope in the 11th general election, held on December 30, 2018, for giving the people back their voting rights but it was marred by widespread intimidation of voters, polling agent ouster, centre grabbing, massive ballot stuffing and clashes.

The controversial general election rather further weakened the country’s chance to put democracy back on track, they observed, adding that the election was criticised locally and internationally as a large number of voters allegedly could not cast their votes in the polls.

In a recent lecture, Centre for Policy Dialogue chairman Rehman Sobhan said that the return of the Awami League to power in January 2009 through a massive electoral victory provided the last opportunity for power to change hands through a competitive election under a non-party caretaker government.  

‘Parliament is, however, only one pillar of the democratic process,’ Rehman Sobhan said in a lecture titled ‘Sustaining Democracy in Bangladesh: the Political Legacy of Tajuddin Ahmad’ on December 24.

 We will need to restore media freedom not just by permitting a proliferation of outlets but by providing them with the freedom to express their views on all issues without the fear of intimidation, legal harassment or incarceration, he commented.

‘Under this elected parliament “the winner takes all culture” was further strengthened thereby enhancing the risks and the costs of electoral defeat,’ he has said about the 2009 Jatiya Sangsad while addressing the Tajuddin Ahmad Memorial Trust Fund Lecture 2019 recently at the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh.

In the eleventh parliamentary elections, ruling Awami League bagged 258 seats and its allies Jatiya Party got 22, Workers Party of Bangladesh three, Bikalpa Dhara Bangladesh two, Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal two, Jatiya Party-JP one and Bangladesh Tarikat Federation obtained one seat.

On the other hand, main opposition BNP secured six seats, its ally Gono Forum two and three independent candidates, including two AL rebel candidates, managed to win the election.

Many local and international organisations came under fire from pro-AL people for criticising the elections as rigged. 

The 10th general election, held on January 5, 2014, too drew huge criticism as 153 AL candidates were elected unopposed while the BNP and other opposition parties boycotted the controversial election.  

On December 24, election commissioner Mahbub Talukdar said that the Election Commission did not want to see a repetition of the past mayoral elections, held by the current EC, in the polls of the two Dhaka city corporations on January 30.

He was addressing a training programme for the returning and assistant returning officers designated for the Dhaka city elections at the Electoral Training Institute in the capital,

He said that only the elections to the Cumilla and Rangpur city bodies were held properly while that glory was ruined in the Barishal, Gazipur and Khulna city polls under this commission.

At a recent programme in the capital, Bangladesh Nationalist Party secretary-general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said that by ensuring a one-party rule in the country the government has destroyed the electoral process.

He further observed that the government established an autocratic regime against the spirit of the country’s Independence War in 1971.

The electoral process has been totally ruined though people wanted changes of government through free, fair and credible elections, he said.

Rehman Sobhan also said that the l5th constitutional amendment passed in June 2011 repealing the provision of the national elections under a caretaker government was an inevitable outcome of the progressive depreciation of the democratic process.

In contrast, the record of the incumbent regime, particularly on the economic front, has been quite promising and compares well with other developing countries, including our neighbours, he noted.

Communist Party of Bangladesh president Mujahidul Islam Selim told New Age that democracy in the country was under seize.

The people have no voting right and in the last year’s general elections on December 30 votes were rigged on the night of December 29, Selim said.

The government was completely responsible for this, he added. 

‘It is natural that autocracy and fascism will grow in the country where an economy of plunder has been introduced,’ Selim observed.

Democracy would not flourish under an economy of looting and it was proved that the question of restoring democracy and voting rights of the people was now linked to a social revolution in the county, he said.

Socialist Party of Bangladesh general secretary Khalequzzaman said, ‘Democracy is now in life support under the autocratic rule of the Awami League government.’

The ruling party has no courage to hold a free, fair and acceptable election in the country, he added.

The government is planning to hold the next general election using electronic voting machines to rig the polls in broad daylight, but it can’t be predicted now how many people would accept that, Khalequzzaman said.

He viewed that there was no alternative to organising a mass movement to oust the government from power.

Ganosamhati Andolan chief coordinator Zonayed Saki said that the opposition political parties should unite to wage a mass movement against the Awami League government which was in power illegally.

‘From our party and the Left Democratic Alliance we would chalk out movement programmes to compel the government to quit power,’ Saki said.

Former Dhaka University professor and a prominent thinker of the country Abul Quasem Fazlul Huq observed that this nation and state had some fundamental problems.

‘After Bangladesh came into being in 1971, democracy was distorted and later abolished here,’ he said.

What exists here in the name of democracy is no democracy, he added.

‘Besides, under the influence of new and advanced technologies there emerged an ideological crisis in politics all over the world,’ Abul Quasem further observed.

Bangladesh, too, is no exception in this regard, he said.

Besides, for the various big projects the World Bank has implemented in this region, including Bangladesh, this country has not grown as an effective state, he went on.

‘No political party and intellectual group tried to develop Bangladesh into a true state,’ Abul Quasem said.

From mid-1980, some political thinkers at home and abroad predicted that de-politicisation would take place in this country, he mentioned.

Politics of the country has now reached such a state that no government and political parties can hold free, fair and acceptable general elections here, the thinker said.

In 1988 and 1996 two ‘voterless’ elections were held and the elections held in 2014 and 2019 were not recognised by the people of the country, he pointed out.

During the last 10-year rule of the Awami League, no political party other than it has flourished but some parties have just perished, he said.

‘We need political parties with completely new political thinking and good character,’ he offered.

Shushashoner Jonno Nagorik-Sujon secretary Badiul Alam Majumder said that a process of ‘controlled election’ was established over the last decade.

As a result of ruining the electoral process and making the Election Commission non-functional democracy has disappeared from the governance system, the civil society leader said.

He warned that the absence of democracy in governance as well as politics would invite big troubles for democracy in the future.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net