Bangladesh: With system crumbling, time running out for Mohammad Yunus

Bangladesh Army chief Gen Waqar-u-Zaman has specified the need to hold elections within 18 months. But the way he threw this suggested timeline makes it interesting and suggestive of underlying tensions in the country's current interim administration.

The army chief spelt this out in an interview with Reuters, an international news agency on a day the chief adviser, Mohammad Yunus, was in New York to take part in the UN General Assembly. Surely, the idea was to reach a global audience when the chief adviser was on the global stage. Interestingly, Yunus faced protests in New York, with many Bangladeshis shouting slogans asking him to step down. It's not clear yet if they are the supporters of exiled former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.     

Yunus and elections

Yunus has avoided giving any timeline for holding elections despite leading political parties pushing him to announce a roadmap for elections. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has publicly expressed dismay over Yunus skirting the issue. So has the ousted Awami League. Only the pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami, a marginal player so far, seems to be in no hurry.

General Waqar, however, couched his suggested timeline for elections with skilful use of language to make it clear that the army, which has recently been given magistracy powers to help it handle law and order, will continue to act professionally and not interfere in politics.

"No matter what happens, the interim government will be given all possible support to complete important reforms and hold elections within the next 18 months," he told Reuters on Monday (September 23). Either this points to a mutually agreed plan to hold elections within 18 months, which chief adviser Yunus has not announced so far. If that is not the case, then the army chief did it independently after discussions with his senior commanders.

Army’s role in Bangladesh

In this rare interview, the army chief said he has fully supported the administration led by Nobel laureate Yunus and wants to help him "complete this mission."

Even though the army chief publicly pandered to civilian supremacy, his interview left no doubt as to who is the real power behind the throne. Extending magistracy powers to the army clearly indicated the interim government's failure to control law and order and its dependence on the army for survival.

Who will bring reforms?

The Bangladesh army is one of the leading contributors to UN peacekeeping missions, and officers and soldiers look forward to such assignments for professional and financial reasons. So, anybody leading the Bangladesh army in such turbulent times would have to retain their professional bearing and not be seen as an instrument of suppression.

This is why General Waqar is known to have pushed Hasina into leaving the country to avoid further bloodshed. This is despite the General being part of Hasina's extended family.

If Bangladesh is to return to "authentic democracy," which has allegedly been undermined by the now-ousted Sheikh Hasina government, far-reaching reforms are surely necessary. But can an unelected government with no popular mandate bring about such reforms?

Work for elections

A government was put in place by a student agitation that turned into a brief mass upsurge. The army chief actually midwifed the formation of this interim government after discussions with different actors, the civil society and student groups. But with no parliament, where is the forum for debating the proposed reforms that the interim government may come up with?

One would imagine major constitutional changes in a functional democracy should be initiated by an elected parliament — an interim government in its present shape (or its earlier caretaker incarnation) should focus on merely paving the way for a truly free and fair election by creating the conditions necessary for it.

Vendetta Republic

The Yunus administration has so far failed to control the law and order situation as the recent eruption of ethnic clashes in the Chittagong Hill Tracts show. A stable law and order is one of the important prerequisites for a free and fair election. Bangladesh seems to have degenerated into a Vendetta Republic where street power has been used to sack judges, bureaucrats and teachers in widespread excesses. The police, which bore the brunt of mob violence after Hasina's ouster, are limited in the presence and thoroughly demoralized. Yunus has also failed to control the student leaders, many of them from radical Islamist backgrounds who brought him to power.

History has a habit of repeating itself in Bangladesh. The military-backed caretaker government, instead of performing its core constitutional duty of conducting a fair election within stipulated months, hung on to power for two years (2006 to 2008), trying to execute the Minus Two formula of neutralising both Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia and their families.

Why the army chief spoke

Hasina used that example of misuse to put an end to the caretaker system by using the sweeping majority of her party-led coalition after 2009. That caretaker administration enjoyed the backing of the same Western democracies who are now in full support of Dr Yunus' interim government.

If Hasina can be blamed for undermining democracy by institutionalising electoral fraud, Yunus will soon face serious questions over his legitimacy. To say "Wait for my reforms" will not help him deflect questions on how an unelected dispensation can bring about major changes without putting them for debate in an elected parliament. How can such a dispensation even contemplate a ban on the country's leading political party, the Awami League, which led the country's fight for freedom! That's vendetta, not reforms.

The army, as a professional institution, realises the dangers of trying to run a turbulent country like Bangladesh or helping an unelected and hastily installed interim government run the country for an unspecified duration. This explains Gen Waqar's rather subtle nudge to Yunus in case he entertains hanging on to power for far too long as an interim head of the government.

(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal)

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