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| Mess in Bangladesh | | India must protect its vital interests | |
WHATEVER may be said of the grim political and constitutional crisis in Bangladesh, it can in no way be called a surprise. Constant conflict and vicious violence have been the luckless country’s hallmark since its blood-drenched birth in 1971. What has made matters worse is the implacable mutual hatred of the two women who dominate the nation’s political life and have alternated as Prime Minister since the end, in 1990, of the reign of the last military ruler, Gen H. M. Ershad. One is the outgoing Prime Minister and leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Begum Khaleda Zia, the widow of the first military president, Gen Ziaur Rahman, and the other the leader of the Awami League as well as of the 14-party Opposition alliance, Sheikh Hasina, the inheritor of the legacy of Sheikh Mujib, as much the father of the nation as hers. No matter who of the two wins the election, the other embarks on a no-holds-barred street action to make the government dysfunctional.
Obviously, both leaders are equally to blame for what has gone wrong with the country. But the primary responsibility for the current crisis of alarming proportions is Begum Zia’s. The discontent arising from her misrule led to a vertical split in her party only recently. But that is sideshow compared with her culpability for brazenly subverting the delicate mechanism to ensure free and fair election that Bangladesh painfully put into place after massive fights over manifestly rigged polls.
Halfway during her tenure, she increased the retirement age of the Chief Justice by two years to ensure that her favourite judge, Mr. K.M. Hasan, one of the BNP’s founders and a one-time BNP parliamentary candidate, would head the mandatory “neutral” government preceding the 2006 election.
No wonder then that at the time of the changeover all hell broke loose. The 14-party alliance protested vigorously. More than a dozen persons were killed and over 100 wounded in virulent street clashes. Mr. Hasan, to his credit, refused to accept the responsibility. After that all that needed to be done was scrupulously to follow the constitution and ask Mr. M. Ameen Chaudhury, Mr. Hasan’s predecessor generally acceptable to all parties, to take over. But the republic’s titular president, Mr. Iajuddin Ahmed, on his own or under instigation from Begum Zia, has appointed himself the head of the caretaker government despite strong and widespread objections, especially by the Awami League that boycotted the swearing-in ceremony at which the President became the Prime Minister also!
The presidential action is clearly unconstitutional, even provocative. But mercifully, both Sheikh Hasina and he have shown commendable restraint. Consequently, at the time of writing, there is relative calm in the country but the controversial issues have by no means been resolved.
In return for Sheikh Hasina’s offer to call off the indefinite, countrywide siege, President Ahmed has sacked a whole lot of pro-BNP officials, employed contractually, who were infesting the entire power structure. But nearly a dozen demands of the Hasina-led Opposition alliance are still pending. The most important is that for the removal of the Chief Election Commissioner, Mr. M.A. Aziz, a blatantly pro-BNP former judge. The President’s decision is still awaited. But Mr. Aziz has taken it upon himself to announce that the President has asked him to “carry on”.
It is thus a touch-and-go situation because to Sheikh Hasina Mr. Aziz’s continuance is totally unacceptable. Today’s uneasy calm could become the proverbial lull before tomorrow’s storm. One can only wait and watch. Also watching the tense situation are the Islamists — with their massive and malign power and influence greatly enhanced under Begum Zia’s patronage — and the Army that has not lost its appetite for power. Without elections that are not only free and fair but are also seen to be free and fair Bangladesh could descend into complete chaos.
As both Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee and the official spokesman of the Foreign Office have stated, India has vital stakes in a “peaceful, democratic and stable” Bangladesh. But the tragedy is that all the three attributes have been undermined grievously by the dynamics of Bangladesh’s internal politics, and the outlook remains ominous.
At the same time India, too, is remiss. Except in the case of Pakistan, New Delhi pays scant attention to neighbours except when they either face a crisis or defiantly act against Indian interests. At present there is deep turmoil in this country’s neighbourhood. However, though the conflicts in Nepal and Sri Lanka do spill over into India, these two countries do not pose a direct threat to this country’s security and supreme interests. Bangladesh certainly does.
It is not merely a question of illegal immigration that has caused acute difficulties in the Northeast. Nor is the problem confined to the sanctuaries Dhaka has been providing to the northeastern, especially Assamese insurgent groups. Of late, Bangladesh has also become a major base for the anti-India operations of the notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan. As investigations into recent bomb blasts in Mumbai, Varanasi, Delhi and elsewhere have shown, ISI-supported jihadi terrorists have entered India through Bangladesh or fled back to that country. Begum Zia and her government had perfected to a fine art their policy of blandly denying the obvious.
Meanwhile, the meandering India-Bangladesh border remains dangerously porous and has become a happy hunting ground for the smugglers, to say nothing of the jihadis.
Bangladesh has a legitimate complaint that it has a trade deficit of $ 1 billion with this country. This is doubtless true of the trade that is recorded. But, as everyone knows, there is also the vastly more voluminous “informal trade”, a charming euphemism for smuggling from India that meets nearly two-thirds of Bangladesh’s needs of essential goods, including Haryana cattle that usually cover the huge distance on foot!
We can be legitimately proud of being the world’s largest and functioning democracy. But we ought to be honest enough to admit that our democracy, too, is not perfect or flawless. The problem in Bangladesh — and Pakistan — has been quite different since their inception. There the Army is tempted and able to take over from bungling politicians. Sadly, Bangladesh is reducing its constitution to a mere scrap of paper. But let us not be complacent, for we have not yet banished this danger. The 251 laws placed behind the protective ramparts of the Ninth Schedule should be warning enough.
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