Bangladesh: On a journey without direction

Opinion

If someone asks me a question like how the new year will be in Bangladesh, I will be in trouble. Because to answer this question, I will have to ask another counter-question, will Bangladesh still exist in 2025? Because the anti-discrimination student movement, which is already recognized as the employer of the current government, has announced that the grave of the constitution of 1972 will be written on the last day of 2024, i.e. 31 December. If that is the case, the question of whether the state called Bangladesh really exists comes to mind.

If the Constitution is buried, then there will be no presidential government or judiciary. If you want, you can change the name of the country. The government has again announced that they do not support this activity. Think about it, BJP is saying that the Constitution of India will be buried. But Narendra Modi is saying that he has nothing to do with it. If there is no connection, then Modiji does not exist.

You understand what a precarious situation Bangladesh is in.

Sheikh Hasina was overthrown through a mass uprising on August 5. The agitators call it the July Revolution. But they are the ones who are in trouble for calling it a revolution. Because a declaration has to be made before a revolution. But that was not in this so-called revolution. Rather, they were the ones who gave the slogan: There is no place for discrimination in Bangabandhu’s Bengal.

The movement originally started with the demand to reduce quota reservation in government jobs. At one point, when the government accepted it, the leaders of the protesters announced that they would withdraw the movement. But in the meantime, when sabotage spread across the country, the law and order situation deteriorated severely. The country went beyond the control of the police. The army was brought onto the streets. Convinced of the army’s position, the government party members and the police withdrew from the field. And the army took this opportunity to commit a great betrayal. The result was the fall of the government. Sheikh Hasina fled.

The clouds rained. The quota movement became a revolution. Professor Yunus, the leader of the revolutionaries, admitted that this was not a revolution, but a meticulous plan to overthrow the government. In such a situation, the revolutionaries were in an image crisis. The crisis began to intensify in the last week of October. 20-25 so-called revolutionaries went to the President’s office, Ganabhaban, and started clamoring for the President’s resignation. They set a time limit of 24 hours. Although they were few in number, they had the patronage of the government behind them. So where 4 people could not stand and speak, they raised their fingers in front of the army and gave speeches for hours. There were meetings. There were processions. At this time, BNP, one of the largest parties in the country, made a move. They said that they did not agree to the removal of the President. As a result, the jumping of the calves stopped within 24 hours.

But why did BNP bow out in October? The reckoning of this interval will determine the course of Bangladesh next year.

The voters of Bangladesh are basically divided into three groups. One group blindly votes for the Awami League. Another group votes for the nationalist party or BNP. The remaining group is basically floating voters. Among them, Islamic parties have a small number of votes.

The rise of BNP is inevitable after the fall of the Awami League. So everyone assumed that BNP would form the next government after the fall of the government in August. The so-called revolutionaries also know that. But they are not willing to bring BNP to power in any way. Because BNP’s role in the movement to overthrow this government was not very significant. Rather, the anti-independence reactionary forces were more active. Among them, the name of the banned organization Hizb-ut-Tahrir is coming up the most. Jamaat-e-Islami was with them. Although their public support is very low, their financial and organizational base is very strong. They want to form a thunderous government based on administration following Sheikh Hasina.

So, as soon as they came to power, they dismissed influential bureaucrats of the previous government. Some were arrested without any reason after being dismissed. Islamist bureaucrats who had retired from service 4/5 years ago were brought back to service. Recently, Nasimul Ghani, a founding member of the banned militant organization Hizb ut Tahrir, was appointed as the senior secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs. When the Awami League formed the government in 2009, Hizb ut Tahrir was banned that same year. Nasimul Ghani was made an OSD (Officer on Special Duty). Four years later, he was sent on compulsory retirement from service. After 11 years, he was brought back to service and appointed to this position.

Again, those who have not been promoted for years due to corruption and various crimes have been given 3 promotions in a month and placed in important positions. Although there is no activity in other departments of the government, frequent promotions are being made in the administration. Hizb ut-Tahrir and Jamaat-e-Islam are benefiting from this. Their people are occupying the top positions. There is pent-up anger in the administration over this. Recently, officials of the administration cadre have been outraged over the proposal for public administration reform. This is basically a ‘mutiny’ of pro-BNP officials. To suppress this, the residences of the secretaries and the secretariat have been set on fire. As a result, the program was canceled the next day.

On the other hand, the grassroots leaders and activists of BNP are busy with extortion, tender bidding and seizure. Due to this, BNP’s popularity has started decreasing day by day in the field. Therefore, the longer the election is delayed, the more BNP’s popularity will decrease. And Hizb-ut-Taliban Pakistan and Jamaat-ul-Islami are busy occupying this vacant seat with the help of the administration. Therefore, BNP’s think tanks are very worried about this. The more elections the current interim government is pushing away in the name of reforms, the more opportunities are being created for the emergence of a third force.

But among all these things, the Liberation War has become a mountain-like obstacle. The Awami League and the BNP mainly do politics by capitalizing on the Liberation War. Therefore, if this Liberation War can be questioned, a level playing field can be created for everyone. Various efforts have been going on for the last half a century to question the Liberation War. Various narratives have been tried to be set up. After the August 5 incident, there has been an attempt to call it the second independence and to make the first independence, that is, the Liberation War, unimportant for some time. But it has not worked. Now, an attempt is being made to present the Liberation War from another perspective. An attempt is being made to set up another narrative. December 16 was considered the greatest day in the history of Bengalis for a long time. Because on this day, the Bengali nation first got an independent state. But now it is being presented as the day of victory over the Delhi invasion. The absence of a significant representative of Bangladesh at the surrender agreement signing ceremony is being brought up again and again.

In the last two months, imports and exports with India have decreased. They have increased with Pakistan. For the first time since independence, Karachi-Chittagong shipping has been started. Pakistani commanders are coming to train Bangladeshi soldiers. This is probably the first incident in the history of the world, soldiers of a defeated country are coming to train the soldiers of a victorious country! There is no telling what this is a sign of.

I don’t think even the current leaders of the country know where this change will take the country. It remains to be seen what the chessboard will look like after the change of regime in the United States on January 20. In the midst of this, the conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and if Pakistan gets involved in the Iran-Israel conflict, will Pakistan be able to focus on Bangladesh like this? There is huge investment from China and Russia in Bangladesh. After August 5, the country’s industrial factories have started closing one after another. Export earnings have collapsed. In such a situation, if there is a strain on foreign debt repayment, it remains to be seen what role China and Russia will play.

It cannot be said that the current government has the strength to handle external pressure. Excluding BNP, the total votes of the small parties that the coordinators are playing around with will not be 7 percent. The Awami League survived for the last 15 years on the strength of a reserve vote bank. There was a fair amount of economic stability and progress on that. But none of these things are there now. So let’s see how the current government runs the country in the coming days.

-Harinarayan Das

Columnist