On Bhola-3 by-election

They just had a number of off year elections in the US. Pundits are analysing the results in New Jersey and Virginia governor races and the Congress by-election (or whatever it is called over there) to draw inferences about President Obama’s popularity with the voters.

Let’s leave that analysis to the Americans and think about the upcoming by-election in Bhola-3. In the absence of credible opinion poll (what happened to the Daily Star Nielsen poll?), this will be a good guide to the current political trends in Bangladesh.

I do some aggregate number crunching in what follows.  BNP may well reclaim the seat, but the magnitude of the victory will point to how (un)popular the AL government is.  But this is based on no knowledge whatosever about the local issues.  Anyone in the house from Bhola to enlighten us?

A tale of two advisors

Dr Akbar Ali Khan and Lt Gen Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury have many things in common.  Both reached the top in their respective fields.  Dr Khan became the country’s top bureaucrat, and is a rare public servant who enjoyed confidence of both Awami League and BNP.   After a distinguished career that included commanding the Bangladeshi contingent in the first Gulf War, Lt Gen Chowdhury also rose to the top of his profession. 

In November 2006, both joined Iajuddin Ahmed’s caretaker government.  At that time, the partisan media dubbed both of them as favourites of Tarique Rahman and the dreaded Hawa Bhaban.   And then in December that year, they both resigned (with two other advisors), saying Iajuddin wasn’t serious about a fair election.  Their actions led credence to the fear of election rigging.  The four advisors were idolised by the media.  And after 1/11, both Dr Khan and Lt Gen Chowdhury were appointed chairmen of agencies that could, in theory, be enablers of fundamental reform.

With the election of the Awami League, both of them found it difficult to stay in their positions.  Both eventually resigned.  No one expects the agencies they led after 1/11 to make any difference to anything.

Even though both had to resign, one of them is a hero in my book, the other a mere has been.  Some of what these two distinguished gentlemen have in common symbolise what has been wrong with Bangladesh.  However, comparing what they don’t have in common perhaps point to how we can improve things. 

What divides us

One of the coolest people I met at the BDI Conference at Kennedy School a few days ago was Lawrence Lifschultz, whose Bangladesh: The Unfinished Revolution should be a must read for anyone interested in the country’s politics, governance, and history.  Without necessarily accepting its normative/prescriptive judgment, it is easily one of the best positive/descriptive account of what happened in Bangladesh in 1975. 

At the risk of sounding heretical, 1975, not 1971, is the pivotal year for Bangladesh — Forum’s Zafar Sobhan once told me.  1971 is settled history.  The important issue of war crimes trial notwithstanding, there is no political division over 1971 — no one is really anti-1971, no one says Bangladesh should become East Pakistan.  The division is, or has been for much of the past 3 decades, over the direction a sovereign Bangladesh should take, with 1975 providing the crossroads.  How one interpretes 1975, who one considers to be the heroes and villains of that blood-stained year, have been the key determinants of one’s politics until recently.

 Last September, two prominent Bangladeshi political scientists echoed these points in back-to-back interviews to Prothom Alo.  There is much that the professors predicted right.  And there is some that they missed.  I thought it would be a good idea to revisit these interviews a year on. 

On the law and order problem

The first, and so far only, opinion poll on the performance of Bangladesh’s current government’s performance found law and order to be the area of its greatest weakness.  That was in April.  Casual observation of the media — newspapers as well as TV news and talk shows — suggest the law and order has slided a lot further in the months since.  Anecdotal evidence from friends and family support the view.  Syeed Ahamed puts it this way:

Such social disorder contradicts the whole purpose of having a national government. Citizens elect a group of persons among themselves as the government of the country so that law and order is maintained. It is perceived as a “social contract” between the people and the government, implying that the people give up some rights to the government in order to receive social order. Most historical accounts suggest this as the reason of establishing states and affirm that the principal task of the government is to maintain law and order. Issues such as taxation, budget, development works, and poverty reduction came much later as other government duties.

And the government’s reaction — return of the ‘crossfire’ under a new name — suggests that it is taking the problem seriously. 

When one starts thinking about the issue, the following points/questions stand out:

1. Crossfires aka encounters aka gunfights aka extrajudicial killings are clear violation of Awami League’s election pledge.

2. It’s not even clear that we have a violent crimes problem that require such drastic measures.

3. The real law and order problem has no quick fix. 

BNP at 31

My family never particularly supported his politics, and yet I vividly remember when the news of the assassination of President Ziaur Rahman reached our house, it seemed as if a close family member had been killed.  I was still a few years away from voting age in Feb 1991, but had cousins and neighbourhood cricket buddies who voted for the first time in that election.  They mostly voted for dhaner sheesh.  For those of us born in the 1970s middle class Bangladesh, Zia’s BNP was the natural party.  Was.  Perhaps not any more.  Most of those cousins and friends had switched to nouka by Dec 2008. 

BNP lost that election badly.  Only the Muslim League’s defeats in 1954 or 1970 were worse than the drubbing it took.  The party marked its 31st birthday earlier this week.  Many once mighty parties — Krishak Sramik Party, National Awami Party or Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal — lasted much less than BNP has.  And yet, one could be forgiven for thinking BNP is also going the way of ML/KSP/NAP/JSD. 

However, I argue that things are not that bad for BNP.  It has been showing enough signs for one to be hopeful about its future.  However, a revival won’t be easy.  And even if one opposes BNP’s politics, anyone who wants to see a democratic Bangladesh has a stake in BNP’s revival, because without constructive opposition committed to democracy, we risk repeating January 1975.

Don’t let them fool you

Spiralling prices, terrorist attacks, blatant attempts to rig the election — the third BNP government’s many failures are self-evident.  And yet, even this incompetent government presided over the fastest growth rate in our history.  But one would be hard pressed to find much good news about that government. 

This is because, in addition to incompetence in general governance, that government was also a disaster in terms of media manipulation and the retail politics of daily news cycle.  In contrast, the current lot is probably the most media savvy in our history. 

It’s therefore vitally important for the independent media — that’s you, dear reader — to be alert.  It’s absolutely crucial that you remain vigilant, and keep the third AL government honest. 

Watching the watchmen watch the lamppost

On 5 July, 17 people under the banner of an organisation called Lamppost gathered in front of the Indian High Commission to protest the Tipaimukh dam.  Evidently, a scuffle with the police ensued, and two people were arrested.

Let’s see how our media covered the news.  At least one of the reports below is outright false.  Maybe all of them are.  The truth doesn’t seem to be something that exists in today’s Bangladesh.

Bangladesh in the Failed State Index

In a 2007 survey of how Bangladesh was viewed by the American foreign policy establishment, fellow Drishtipat Writer Tazreena Sajjad described a failed state thus.

In layman’s terms, they are generally categorised by what they do not, or cannot, do. Failing and failed states do not control their territory or their borders, creating the scope for groups to move in and out without hindrance. Such states also do not control many areas, which can be under control of rebels and warlords, and do not provide basic services (health, nutrition, infrastructure, public services). Finally, they cannot fulfill international treaty obligations, and agreements of international concern. The most extreme examples are, of course, places like Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Haiti and, increasingly, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Every year, the US based Foreign Policy magazine publishes an index of failed or failing states — details here.  The index is a sum of 12 specific factors.  A country can receive up to 10 points for each factor, with a higher score meaning a worse (ie failing) outcome.  There may be serious methodological issues with trying to quantify something that is essentially qualitative.  And one has to be very cautious about using an index that consistently ranks North Korea as a less failing state than Pakistan when we won’t find many Pakistanis willing to have Kim Il Jong running their country (this point is explained better here).

These methodological issues notwithstanding, the index is relevant for two reasons.  Firstly, it is a high profile index that US foreign policy apparatchiks pay attention to.  And when all is said and done, we still live in a world where if the American establishment is concerned that a particular country is ‘trouble’, it is likely that the country will find itself in trouble eventually.  And second, we should still go through the index to see whether the findings reflect our ground realities. 

For example, in 2008, Bangladesh scored higher than Haiti — a country used by Ms Sajjad as an ‘extreme example’ of a failed state.  That is, after 18 months under an experiment that was supposed to improve our republic, Bangladesh was more of a failed state than Haiti — this unfortunate result didn’t come as a surprise to those of us who rejected that experiment from a very early stage.  

For his father’s sins?

On 7 June, six officers of the Bangladesh Army were summarily dismissed.  According to the media reports, these officers — Lt Cols Shamsul Islam, Mahdi Nasrullah Shahir and Md Shafiul Haque Chowdury, Major Mahsinul Karim, and Captains AKM Annur Hossain and Habiba Islam.  Then, on 23 June, Brig Gen Abdullahil Azmi was summarily dismissed.  A fellow blogger wrote to me thus: … as observers and analysts of political power, I think we need to follow these things closely and track them on a continuing basis.

Here is my take on the dismissals.

On Tipaimukh 1

In a political adda recently, a friend (and a fellow blogger) said: all this is true bhai, but who would have thought on 23 Feb what would happen in the following 72 hours?  True, political prediction is a mug’s game.  Forget about the truly ‘black swan’ events like Pilkhana.  It is hard to predict what issues might dominate a few month’s hence in normal political circumstances. 

Take Tipaimukh for example.  Where was this issue during the election campaign?  And yet, it is perhaps the single biggest issue dominating Dhaka’s chattering circuit these days.   Indeed, this blogger has been asked by some readers: why radio silence over this issue?   

The most important reason for not writing about it is because I didn’t know much about it.  And frankly, I am not all that wiser now.  But I do have some thoughts.  I’ll note two here.  Two more will be in a sequel post.

• While it’s not really clear what the environmental impact will be,  as a downstream country, we will be affected. 
• India isn’t being a good neighbour, and won’t be a good neighbour unless we act. 

Detail over the flap.  A discussion is welcome.