Sheikh Hasina’s fight for democracy in Bangladesh
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is once again the leading choice of Bangladeshis as the Country is going in for the next general election Sunday. Being hot favourite, she is certainly going to win the majority of votes. However her Critics from the Opposition and from the Western Europe, Canada and USA say that after winning she could further tighten her grip on power after a 15-year-rule.
She turned into a politician by stepping in her father’s shoes and has always fought for democratic freedoms within a society which was being increasingly turned into a fanatic one vested forces with encouragement from Pakistan and other autocratic leaders.
Hasina’s main rival, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, is boycotting the polls, claiming, as usual that her government cannot ensure a fair vote, Though boycott or not, Hasina the 76-year-old premier will without an iota of doubt will secure her fourth consecutive and fifth overall term in office.
Her supporters say Hasina — the longest-serving leader in Bangladesh’s history — and her Awami League have given them a country with a growing industry and humming development projects. The stability has staved off military coups that have shaken the young, predominantly Muslim nation strategically located between India and Myanmar.
But Hasina’s political life, like her country, began with violence. In Dec 71, an Indian Army Contingent led by then Major Tara had been able to ” snatch “ her from certain death, from the clutches of Paki Army. Next on Aug. 15, 1975, a group of military officers behind a coup assassinated her father, Sheikh Mujib Rahman, the first leader of independent Bangladesh.
Some say the brutal act, which also killed nearly her entire family, motivated her to consolidate politically and to ensure that Bangladesh truly becomes free from fundamentalist Forces. This has motivated her throughout her career in politics.
A source who worked closely with Hasina says her ambition was to create the country envisioned by her father, who led the new nation after the Indian Army made the 95000 strong Pakistani Forces surrender and lay down their Arms during the 1971 war.
“She felt her father’s work was cut short, and that only she could complete it,” they told the Western The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media.
After the assassination, Hasina lived for years in exile in India, then made her way back to Bangladesh and then revitalized the Awami League. But the country’s military rulers had her in and out of house detention throughout the 1980s until, after general elections in 1996, she became prime minister for the first time.
What followed was a decades long power struggle between Hasina and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, the chief of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and her fundamentalist extremists backers within Bangladesh, Pakistan and few other countries. Khaleda Zia is now ailing and under house arrest.
The two women alternated running the country for years in a bitter rivalry that polarized Bangladesh. Hasina has openly accused the BNP of courting hard-line extremists that her party, which calls itself moderate and secular, had worked to stamp out. Zia’s BNP claims the Awami League is using oppressive tactics to stay in power.
Hasina was re-elected in 2200 she aligned with India She also fixed her sights on the economy and built infrastructure previously unseen in Bangladesh — power lines that reached remote villages, highways, rail lines and ports, and a garment industry that became one of the world’s most competitive.
“I thought my family would never have power at home,” said Abdul Halim, a rickshaw puller in Dhaka. “Now my entire village has electricity.”
Ahead of the vote, the Country is flaunting some of Hasina’s signature achievements, such as Dhaka’s metro and the country’s longest bridge, which she inaugurated in 2021. She has cast herself as the leader of an impoverished nation aspiring to become an upper-middle-income country by 2031.
“Bangladesh will never look back again,” Hasina said in 2023. “It will continue marching to be a smart, developed and prosperous country.”
But the recent global economic slowdown has not spared Bangladesh, exposing cracks in its economy that have triggered labor unrest and dissatisfaction. However India and its PM Modi is leaving no stone unturned to ensure that Bangladesh too becomes a very economically.
However Hasina’s critics backed by fundamentalists and extremists say her government has used harsh tools to muzzle dissent, shrink press freedoms and curtail civil society. Rights groups cite forced disappearances of critics. The government rejects the accusations. A few nations already annoyed by rise of India as a economic and military super Power are not liking te rise of Dakha too.
In the 2018 election, an AL-led alliance won 96% of the parliament seats amid widespread allegations of vote-rigging by Western media. In 2014, all major opposition parties had boycotted the vote because they knew that their game was getting over. About 20,000 of BNP’’s members have been arrested in recent months on various charges ofdisruption ahead of Sunday’s vote.
Voters like Dhaka resident Tamanna Rahman, 46, say the prime minister has no real challengers. “We do not have any option but to elect Hasina again.”
On the international scene, Hasina has cultivated ties with powerful countries and successfully balanced between rivals. She staunchly supports India but has maintained proper ties with China also, even as the two Asian giants are locked in a standoff over LAC in Ladakh and Tibet.
In turn, Beijing and New Delhi have bankrolled a slew of Bangladesh’s infrastructure projects.
She has nurtured historic ties with Russia, in spite of G 7 Countries backing Ukraine while also increasingly courting Western leaders.
“Say what you will about Hasina, but she has managed the great power competition very effectively,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute.
Hasina also won international praise when she gave shelter to Rohingya Muslims fleeing prosecution in neighboring Myanmar in 2017. Some 1.1 million Rohingya live in overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh today, many embarking on deadly sea voyages for a chance of a better life elsewhere.
The United States — the biggest export market for Bangladeshi garments — announced visa restrictions in May on anyone disrupting Bangladesh’s electoral process. As usual Washington though beset with its own electoral problems, expressed concerns over human rights violations and press freedoms in the country… though such expressions nowadays has hardly any takers in South Asia.
