By Ashish Singh
In this conversation, I spoke with Bangladeshi-Swedish writer Anisur Rahman about the changing body politic of Bangladesh.
Ashish Singh: How do you see the political system of Bangladesh changing over the years?
Anisur Rahman: Bangladesh emerged as a welfare democratic state by upholding socialism, democracy, nationalism, and secularism. It was a parliamentary democracy. However, following the 1973 general elections, the country’s founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman introduced a one-party socialist programme called BAKSAL, Bangladesh Krishak Shramik Awami League. It was a kind of Soviet Socialist model.
Bangabandhu along with other founding leaders and family members was assassinated in a military coup in 1975. Military dictatorship emerged. Both parliamentary democracy and BAKSAL were dissolved. The military autocratic regime continued until 1990.
After the fall of military dictatorship, Bangladesh regained parliamentary democracy through a consensus among major political parties, for instance, the BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) led by Khaleda Zia and the Awami League led by Sheikh Hasina in 1991. It continued until 2006.
There was a provision to have a non-partisan interim regime for three months for holding general elections and running routine administration at the end of every mandate period.
This strange system was not free from controversy. As an outcome, the country experienced a military-backed non-partisan regime in 2007-2008. After a landslide victory in 2008 of the Awami League-led grand alliance, parliamentary democracy had a new start in 2009.
Following the tragic end of Sheikh Hasina’s regime, the country fell into a fishy ’trap’.
Ashish Singh: What do you think Muhammad Yunus must do to uphold democracy intact in Bangladesh?
Anisur Rahman: First of all the Yunus regime is ’unconstitutional’. His administration’s first and last priority must be holding acceptable and fair general elections at the earliest.
In a few weeks of its honeymoon period, the Yunus regime has already been stigmatised by centralising power.
His administration invited a series of controversies by dissolving elected bodies in local government units and removing office bearers from various key positions in banks, universities, government, and autonomous offices.
News media witnesses mad unrest and heavy self-censorship. People do have reasons to allege the Yunus administration for allowing a group of Jongi students to create social unrest and chaos at many institutions and harass teachers, particularly minorities.
In brief, Dr Yunus must have two agendas on his priority list: Stability in public life, and the earliest general elections. It requires dialogue and consensus among political parties. People hope for a democratic transition at the earliest.
Ashish Singh: It seems you and several others do not have confidence in Muhammad Yunus, would you like to expand on that?
Anisur Rahman
Anisur Rahman: Yes. Conspiracy is obvious behind the installation of Dr Muhammad Yunus as a significant public figure in recent history. It was a part of a long-standing imperial game by Western superpowers in South Asia. Yunus is on a mission to bring back drawing room politics. On this journey, his favourite elements are mostly NGO executives and retired civil and military bureaucrats. He is a brand name for depoliticising a country.
Yunus created a series of myths in favour of his controversial microcredit practice. Many poor people committed suicide after falling into the trap of his microloan system.
Not Yunus but Rabindranath Tagore is the pioneer for the introduction of micro banking. Rabindranath started the Kaligram Krishi Bank at Patishar village in Naogaon district of today’s Bangladesh in 1905.
It is international media propaganda to present Dr Yunus as the pioneer of micro-credit banking.
Yunus’ ’unconstitutional’ administration by now has turned out to be authoritarian when the authority removed hundreds of elected office bearers at diverse local government units through a single order.
A bunch of corruption charges were pending against Yunus at the Anti-Corruption Commission. All the charges were withdrawn.
It is now obvious that he and Islamist groups do have a common goal to stigmatise the liberal progressive socialist democratic spirit of Bangladesh in line with the Liberation War of Bangladesh. Born in 1941, Muhammad Yunus was in his early thirties in 1971. It is a pity that he did not make any significant contribution to the long journey of the country’s independence.
To know the other side of this Nobel laureate, one may read the book, ’Poverty Trade of Dr Yunus’ written by Badruddin Umar, a Bengali philosopher based in Dhaka.
The severity of ugly barbarism that Bangladesh experienced in a couple of weeks under the Yunus regime surpassed that in the last 50 years of the country’s history. If Bangladesh in the near or distant future comes out as a ’jongi state’, Dr Yunus will get the blame for it. If he fails to ensure a democratic transition at the earliest, people will see him as an enemy of the people, and his cabinet be marked as the ’Mir Jafar Cabinet’.
(Ashish Singh is a social and political scientist.)
