EDITORIAL – SEPT 2024 – PERILS OF DYNASTIC POWER
Dancing with many partners
Bangladeshis are once again living under the military with their elected leader deposed by street protests.
In the past half-century, the country has swung from being a military-run basket-case to a democratic poster child of the developing world.
But now it is swinging back again, and the dramatic unravelling of Bangladesh shines a spotlight at two levels.
One exposes a regional playbook thatis all too familiar within South Asian politics. The other underlines the intricate and nuanced challenges of building solid institutions in poor and corrupt societies.
First, South Asia.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina attempted to stem weeks of protest with deadly force. She failed and had to flee by military helicopter with barely an hour’s notice.
Thousands stormed her official residence, shouting slogans, pumping fists and showing victory signs.
The military took control and appointed technocrat and Nobel laureate, Mohamed Yunus, as interim prime minister.
Sheikh Hasina is the daughter of Bangladesh’s founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, himself assassinated in 1975 and his government overthrown.
This culture of entrenched family power bedevils South Asia and, in no small measure, is responsible for holding back the region’s economic and political development.
Two years ago, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had to flee Sri Lanka as protestors stormed his residence. For decades, the Rajapaksa family had been one of the most powerful in the country.
Similarly, Pakistan has been unable to dismantle the controlling and damaging influence of its powerful families and specifically their nexus with the military.
Nepal and the Maldives routinely endure tension and unrest.
No South Asian country can escape the influence of India which, itself, remains trapped in its own dynastic quandary.
Congress, in opposition now for more than ten years, has been unable to shed the Nehru-Gandhi family. Such an authoritative force within Indian politics should, by now, be insisting on leadership by merit, not inheritance.
Sheikh Hasina’s downfall came only seventh months after a general election was meant to have given her a fifth term in office.
But the main opposition boycotted the election, and her victory failed to subdue growing deep discontent about manipulation at the ballot box, the curtailing of personal freedoms, the undermining of institutions and using brutality to suppress protests.
In Pakistan and Sri Lanka there is enthusiasm for elections coupled with a general mistrust. This brings us to the second level of exposure,which is about democracy itself.
The aim of elections is to install a government chosen by a majority of voters whose issues of interest usually revolve around living standards, education, health and individual freedom.
Bangladesh, under Sheikh Hasina, made remarkable strides, with the economy growing briskly, incomes on the rise, and various social indicators moving in positive directions.
More thorny issues such as Islamic extremism and Chinese influence were dealt with deftly, as were pressures from India and the United States.
But hubris set in.
The catalyst that unlocked discontent was a law that gave job quotas to descendants of veterans of the 1971 war of independence against Pakistan, yet again underlining the concept of inherited rather than merited privilege.
With more than forty per cent of Bangladeshis between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four neither studying nor employed, hundreds of thousands of foot-soldiers stood ready to take to the streets.
The danger, of course, is the growing irrelevancy of the ballot box within the minds of an electorate resigned to a reality that the military’s guns and family money will render their votes useless.
The lesson from Bangladesh is that South Asia needs to explode myths and rid itself of family dynasties. Merit and ability must prevail, and the wives and children of long-ago leaders must have no automatic place at the top table of politics.
For democracy to prevail, South Asian nations must regulate patronage, put checks on the military and create institutions that work for the people.
Democracy, globally, is going through a fragile stage. The abrupt collapse of this poster child of the developing world must be a warning to us all.