Can Bangladesh be an exception? : NPR

Michael Kugelman is director of the South Asia Institute on the Wilson Middle in Washington, D.C. This text is printed as a part of NPR’s 2024 Year of Global Elections collection.

It has occurred many instances throughout Asia, the Center East and past: Hundreds of thousands of individuals — aggrieved by financial stress, repression, corruption and impunity — launch a motion that ousts their autocratic authorities from energy.

It just lately occurred in Bangladesh, the world’s eighth-most-populous nation. This previous summer season, college students mobilized in opposition to what they seen as unfair job quotas. After safety forces cracked down viciously, their motion morphed right into a mass anti-government marketing campaign that culminated within the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Whereas folks energy actions upend politics, they typically fail to supply lasting democratic change. Bangladesh has an opportunity to be an exception — nevertheless it will not be simple.

Individuals energy’s combined report

In February 1986, after common protests, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos fled the Philippines and arrived in Hawaii.

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Alberto Marquez/AP

In February 1986, after common protests, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos fled the Philippines and arrived in Hawaii.

Alberto Marquez/AP

The folks energy idea originated within the Philippines in 1986, when mass protests ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos. This ushered in a protracted interval of democracy. However in 2022, the Marcos household returned to energy. Marcos’ son was elected president following a marketing campaign that deployed revisionism and misinformation to disclaim his father’s repressive rule.

Newer examples have been even much less profitable. “Colour revolutions” in Central Asia within the early 2000s did not eradicate the democratic deficits plaguing the area right now. The Arab Spring motion within the 2010s did not forestall the reemergence of dictators within the Center East and North Africa.

In South Asia, Bangladesh’s neighborhood, a pro-democracy motion in Pakistan ended navy rule in 2008 — however right now, Pakistan’s military stays a dominant political participant. And after mass protests over financial mismanagement ousted Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2022, he was succeeded by an ally, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who lined his Cupboard with Rajapaksa loyalists. This 12 months’s presidential election presents some hope: It catapulted to energy Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who rejects the Rajapaksas’ rule and strongly supported the 2022 protests.

Nevertheless, some Sri Lankans will fear in regards to the democratic bona fides of his get together: It was as soon as a violent Maoist insurgent group, and it unconditionally backed the federal government’s brutal marketing campaign in opposition to the Tamils, Sri Lanka’s largest ethnic minority group, within the nation’s two-decade civil conflict.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus heads again to Bangladesh from Paris after his nation’s revolution in August. He’s now the nation’s interim chief.

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Luis Tato/AFP by way of Getty Photos

No clear imaginative and prescient on the best way ahead

There are a lot of causes to imagine Bangladesh will not buck the development of political change with out democratic consolidation. Hasina’s ouster has left each political in addition to safety vacuums, giving extra space to non secular radicals. For instance, an al-Qaida-inspired terrorist chief was released from jail in August with all costs dropped, dozens of younger males marched through Dhaka in October demanding the set up of an Islamic caliphate and movies are surfacing of younger Bangladeshi boys pledging jihad.

Moreover, with Hasina, who dominated for 15 consecutive years, now out of the political image, Bangladesh’s politics have been left in a extremely unsettled state. The Bangladesh Nationalist Get together (BNP) — the Awami League’s foremost rival — needs to return to energy. But it surely was simply as repressive because the Awami League when in workplace throughout components of the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s.

The military, which staged coups in Bangladesh’s early years, stayed behind the barracks throughout Hasina’s rule. However the nation’s giant political vacuum has thrust the military right into a outstanding political function; the military chief now comments publicly about politics. This reminds among the interval between 2006 and 2008, when the navy closely influenced a earlier interim authorities.

Ominously, there is not any clear political imaginative and prescient or consensus on the best way ahead for a post-Hasina Bangladesh. Protest leaders had been impelled by the singular objective of ousting the previous dictator, with no “day after” plan. The BNP needs early elections, however others will wish to maintain off. Protest leaders might want extra time to kind a political get together. The military might want time to make sure a restoration of legislation and order. The interim authorities needs to prioritize reforms — a sensible transfer in a nation the place public establishments are tormented by corruption, nepotism and general ineffectiveness.

However long-established political events and different vested pursuits could resist reforms, fearing that reforms may dismantle the system that helped them preserve energy and patronage. Extra broadly, the absence of a transparent time-frame for elections and a wider political transition will heighten uncertainty and, over time, may threat additional unrest. Moreover, if the interim authorities does implement significant reforms, an eventual election may produce a authorities that decides to reverse them.

The interim authorities is in a tricky spot

Finally, the interim authorities is in a tricky spot: It has set sky-high public expectations with deeply bold plans for large-scale reforms and democratization. But when the reform course of lags and if Bangladesh’s sputtering economic system would not enhance, the general public’s persistence may begin to put on skinny for an administration that for now enjoys ample assist. In any case, it’s unelected, and therefore it lacks a public mandate.

But regardless of all this, there’s nonetheless some hope for Bangladesh’s democracy due to the emergence of highly effective new political actors decided to revive it. These embody the scholar leaders of the protests that ousted Hasina, a few of whom now serve within the interim authorities. This administration additionally options revered human rights campaigners and others calling for democratic reform.

These leaders have impressed legions of Bangladeshi youth — a dominant demographic in a nation with a median age of 25 — to telegraph their dedication to advance democracy. Since Hasina’s ouster, they’ve stood guard to guard Hindu temples from extremists, directed visitors on streets deserted by police, cleaned up harm from avenue clashes, returned looted money and weaponry, and painted pro-peace murals.

The interim authorities is led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, one of many nation’s most outstanding pro-democracy advocates. He instructions deep respect from his compatriots, particularly Bangladeshi youth. Examples abound — from Czechoslovakia’s Vaclav Havel to South Korea’s Kim Dae-jung — of dissidents taking energy and serving to consolidate democracy. One cannot rule out Yunus and pupil leaders forming a brand new get together to tackle Bangladesh’s dynastic and decidedly undemocratic political leaders.

Rising above the poisonous politics

An injured protester is introduced for therapy at Dhaka Medical School Hospital throughout a conflict with police and protesters on Aug. 4.

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Zabed Hasnain Chowdhury/NurPhoto by way of Getty Photos

To maneuver the needle ahead, Bangladesh’s new leaders might want to rise above the poisonous politics which have contributed to the nation’s authoritarian slide. However they’re vulnerable to getting embroiled in them as an alternative of transcending them. Yunus was one in all Hasina’s fiercest critics. Holdouts and supporters of the earlier regime don’t need him in energy, which may intensify the nation’s bitterly polarized politics.

In the meantime, protest leaders have mentioned they will return to the streets if their political calls for aren’t met. They’ve insisted the federal government shouldn’t have any navy footprint — and but with the present political vacuum, that is seemingly not within the playing cards. This implies recent confrontations cannot be dominated out.

Moreover, any promising efforts made by these new political actors threat getting eclipsed by the entrenchment of outdated issues that resurge and hamper democratization — reminiscent of renewed political engineering by the military, intensified enmity between the Awami League and the BNP, or new campaigns of violence unleashed by emboldened non secular extremists.

Bangladesh Nationalist Get together leaders and supporters protest in Dhaka on Nov. 8.

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Abdul Goni/AFP by way of Getty Photos

Individuals energy’s unfinished work

Individuals energy actions typically fall quick as a result of they fail to deal with structural impediments to democratization — like inadequate checks on repression and impunity, in addition to the absence of pathways to politics for these exterior the entrenched political elite. Certainly, delivering on democracy in Bangladesh is a tall order. It requires restoring legislation and order and bolstering human rights; ending the politics of retribution; initiating reforms that depoliticize and create extra accountability in public establishments; and ultimately holding free and truthful elections.

For a lot of Bangladeshis, a profitable youth-led mass motion has shattered a protracted malaise and kindled a newfound optimism in regards to the nation’s future. Time will inform whether or not such sentiment is rewarded. If that optimism finally ends up being misplaced, Bangladesh — even post-Hasina — would be the newest reminder of democracy’s world hunch, and of individuals energy’s unfinished work.