Big shake up

Hasina’s landslide victory revives the prospect of the emergence of a more modern and secular Bangladesh.


It was a merciless drubbing by any standards. Nobody, including the severest critics of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by Khaleda Zia, had the slightest clue as to how much the ground had shifted from under the former prime minister’s feet. When the final results were announced, the BNP lay in ruins and Khaleda shocked and shattered.

Sheikh Hasina after her huge victorySheikh Hasina after her huge victory
The Awami League (AL), led by her arch rival Sheikh Hasina, notched a stunning victory, securing 230 of the 300 parliamentary seats.

With the Jatiya Party, headed by the former military dictator, Gen. Hossain Mohammed Ershad, and some smaller leftist parties getting a few more, the AL-led ‘Grand Alliance’ gained a total of 262 seats, making for the strongest showing ever in Bangladesh’s chequered history of parliamentary democracy.

The BNP-led four-party alliance, with the Jamaat-e-Islami as a significant component, which got a twothirds majority in the last elections in 2001 could manage only 32 seats this time around.

The result is as much an embracing of the AL’s modern and secularist platform as it is equally, if not more, a rejection of the corrupt, dynastic, violent and religion-based politics that the BNP propagated in the five years of its rule. A form of ‘Jamaatisation’ of the BNP took place with Begum Zia’s increasing dependence and trust on the Jamaat’s leaders, while its ministers became more and more corrupt. This totally turned off young voters who constituted nearly 50 per cent of the total, including 32 per cent first-timers. Women who traditionally vote BNP abandoned them near-completely due to the violence and harassment they experienced during the last BNP regime.

While Khaleda campaigned on “Islam being in danger” and Bangladesh’s sovereignty and independence being under threat, Hasina’s election campaign significantly put great emphasis on the country’s secular traditions and pledged to build a democratic society with rights of all religious and ethnic minorities protected, including the land rights for the hill people, a major issue as their lands are coming under pressure from population rise.

Hasina appeared to have made a deliberate choice of not pandering to religious and obscurantist forces and clearly positioning herself with what are known in Bangladesh as proliberation forces. In a departure from customary vague pledges about regional cooperation, the AL leader in her election manifesto committed to form “a South Asian Task Force” to meet the challenges of terrorism and militancy. The exact terms, composition and functioning of such a task force is still be to worked out but such a pledge indicates her firm commitment to take new initiatives to combat militancy and terrorism.

Cooperation in fighting terrorism and militancy opens a new window of opportunity to further Bangladesh-India ties, especially in areas of security. India, however, must understand the depth of Bangladesh’s economic challenges and must go far beyond the usual measures in improving the balance trade between the neighbours. Economic cooperation, particularly providing a greater share of the rising Indian market to Bangladeshi products, remains to be one of the best ways forward.

The return of the AL and Hasina to power with threefourths majority in the Parliament is not just a demonstration of her massive new strength but also a measure of the tremendous responsibility she must shoulder to steer Bangladesh through the challenges of global meltdown, climate change and rising militancy. Bangladesh’s economic problems, huge population, weak administrative structure and the periodic devastating natural calamities make governing the country far from an enviable task.

Regrettably, Bangladesh is a very politically divided country today with every strata of the society having been pulled into it. Hasina’s most challenging task will be to try to unite them, not on her terms, but in an accommodative framework that goes far beyond the traditional ways of thinking. The AL leader called her party’s election manifesto “a charter for change”. It will, I am afraid, have to start very much from home.
The writer is the editor-publisher of the Daily Star published from Dhaka

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