Mass protests in Bangladesh toppled Sheikh Hasina after state repression left hundreds dead. But the interim government led by microcredit guru Muhammad Yunus is unable to tackle the serious social problems facing the country’s working classes.
After fifteen years in power, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, resigned and fled the country on August 5, driven out by young protesters. What began as a movement against quotas in the civil service turned into a general uprising against the autocratic power of Hasina and her party, the Awami League (AL).
The situation changed over a period of five weeks, and the final victory was achieved at the cost of over four hundred lives and several thousand wounded and missing. The turn of events in this South Asian country is reminiscent of Sri Lanka in 2022, or the mass revolt that forced Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos to flee the country in 1986 after two decades of autocratic rule.
On August 5, Hasina had just forty-five minutes to resign and leave the country, as hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets, ready to defy the curfew at any cost. Just the day before, she seemed to deny that her term as Prime Minister was over. However, a popular tide swept her away like a mighty tsunami. The army chief facilitated her escape.
A full circle
With Hasina’s out, a complete circle of AL politics was brought full circle. The League’s most recent phase of consolidation began with its victory in the 2008 elections, when the 14-party alliance it led won an overwhelming majority of 263 out of 300 seats. Although the party had been in power twice before (1971-75 and 1996-2001), this was a historic victory.
Parliamentary elections originally scheduled for January 2007 were suspended after months of political upheaval. In the meantime, a military-backed interim government continued to rule, raising the spectre of another military dictatorship, albeit in the form of a farce. For the first twenty years of its existence, Bangladesh was either under direct military rule or administered by a military-backed government for almost sixteen of those years.
This victory also marked the Awami League’s prolonged consolidation of power. Considered a secular force because of its historical roots and leadership role in the liberation war, the party came to power on the back of this nostalgia. Since 2007, a new civil society movement, supported by the LA, has stepped up demands for the trial of war criminals who collaborated with the West Pakistan army.
The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which governed between 2001 and 2006, entered the elections in alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami, a radical Islamic group. Observers also saw the elections as a public rejection of radical Islamic ideals and a repudiation of religious politics.
Two turning points
The movement for the restoration of democracy in 1990 (popularly known as the Anti-Authoritarian Movement of the 90s), after years of military rule, was the first positive turning point in the history of independent Bangladesh. Millions of people took to the streets from November 1997 to demand the restoration of civilian rule.
The country had been held hostage by military gangsters between 1982 and 1990, under the reign of army chief H. M. Ershad. His regime was a dark episode marked by murders and assaults, arbitrary arrests and detentions, corruption and looting, accompanied by the annihilation of democracy and democratic values. A popular uprising ousted Ershad and paved the way for parliamentary democracy.
The movement contributed to the emergence of a new progressive consciousness, particularly among young people, as well as to certain constitutional reforms. It helped to delegitimize the army’s hold on politics. The political parties reached a consensus on the nation’s future democratic trajectory – a consensus that was subsequently violated. The Awami League and the BNP benefited greatly from the perception that they were at the vanguard of these struggles.
The second major turning point was the 2013 movement, popularly known as the Shahbag movement, demanding capital punishment for war criminals. The Awami League initially supported this mobilization, as it served its own interests and objectives. However, the Shahbag demonstrators began to call for a broader democratization of society and an end to socio-economic injustices.
At first, the League tried to control the movement, but failed. It then withdrew its party cadres and harassed Shahbag’s leaders, while encouraging infighting within their ranks, which paralyzed the struggle. The Bangladeshi left continued to participate in Shahbag protests, but left-wing organizations were few in number and had limited impact on the country’s political scene.
In 2014, the movement lost momentum. In the process, the country lost one of its greatest chances of achieving true democratization and tackling socio-economic injustices under pressure from self-organized grassroots movements. In the end, the Shahbag movement was wiped out.
Repression of the opposition
Having achieved this objective, the Awami League continued to dismantle its political adversary, the BNP. For the AL, Jamaat-e-Islami and other Islamic groups were also a factor, but the BNP was its immediate electoral adversary. AL leaders quickly realized that discontent with their record of bad governance could benefit the BNP electorally.
BNP leaders were arrested at random and charges were brought against them, destabilizing the party. In addition, the BNP had long enjoyed strong support from the army. However, as the military establishment’s interest in civilian power waned, the party’s strength weakened.
Its record when in power between 2001 and 2006 was also characterized by corruption and violent attacks on the opposition, including an assassination attempt on Hasina with a grenade in 2004. This record discredited the party and contributed to its continued decline, when combined with the Awami League’s ruthless use of the state apparatus against its rival. The BNP tried unsuccessfully to manipulate the electoral system to cling to power in 2006, but the League demonstrated superior mastery of these tactics.
The BNP withdrew from the 2014 elections on the grounds that they were held under unfair conditions. It demanded Hasina’s resignation as Prime Minister to make way for an “impartial” and “non-party” figure to oversee the elections. This abdication simply handed power to the League on a platter, with 153 out of 300 candidates elected uncontested.
The Awami League then blocked the BNP’s political activities throughout the country, and thousands of lawsuits were filed against party leaders and activists, ranging from corruption to murder charges. The party was unable to recover from these attacks on several fronts and resorted to violence after 2014, giving the League the opportunity to target it further. Khaleda Zia, twice BNP Prime Minister, was jailed for corruption in February 2018.
A turn to the right
At the same time, left-wing forces involved in popular movements also faced harassment and repression. The state targeted the leaders of the Rampal movement with false accusations and physical intimidation, and workers’ movements suffered the same fate.
Bangladeshi Islamists used to support the BNP in elections. However, with the decline of the BNP, these forces began to participate in the electoral arena on their own. Meanwhile, the Awami League compromised its historic secular credentials by forming a tacit alliance with Hefazat-e-Islam, a radical Islamist group that has been responsible for the murder of secular bloggers.
The AL-led political front included several conservative Islamist parties. In addition, Hasina’s government granted certain concessions to Islamist forces, such as the validation of Qawmi madrasas, religious schools with a conservative curriculum that are not regulated by the government. These schools focus solely on religious education and confine students from the poorer sections of the population to mystical religious dogmas. All these developments have taken place despite the League’s claim to be the supreme saviour of Bangladesh’s minority Hindu religious community.
The Awami League increasingly took control of the state administration through the process of appointments [of civil servants] and brought the media and intelligentsia under control through a mixture of incentives and coercion. By the end of 2018, the AL had a firm grip on the bureaucracy, the judiciary and even the army, traditionally seen as a major supporter of the BNP.
The results of the 2018 elections exceeded even the League’s most optimistic expectations, with its candidates winning 288 of the 300 seats at stake. The next elections, in January 2024, were a sham, with the entire opposition absent from the ballot. This pushed resistance into the extra-parliamentary arena, culminating in the protests that ousted Hasina.
The interim government
Three days after Hasina’s departure, economist Muhammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, was sworn in as head of Bangladesh’s interim government. Officially called the “Chief Advisor”, Mr. Yunus will lead a seventeen-strong team of retired bureaucrats and military officers, NGO figures, lawyers, academics and others, as well as some student leaders involved in the rebellion. The team is diverse in terms of the origins of its members, as well as ethnically and religiously, although it contains no representatives of the working class.
The steady erosion of democratic institutions in Bangladesh has given rise to a deep hatred of existing political parties. Yunus was an appropriate figure to lead the caretaker government as a well-known personality who projected the image of someone rising above partisan politics while promoting national development. He was also harassed by Hasina’s government and almost forced to leave the country, which reinforced sympathy for him.
For Mr. Yunus, this adventure follows previous unsuccessful attempts to enter the political arena. While high expectations are now being placed on him, we must bear in mind his earlier role as a promoter of microcredit programs. Far from representing a cure for rural poverty, these programs merely imposed additional burdens on the poor. His zealous defense of neoliberal policies has made Yunus the darling of Western governments and the World Bank.
With the Awami League discredited, the two main remaining political forces, the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami, are hoping that early elections will bring them to power. The latter force, in particular, seems to be very well organized, with networks of activists all over the country, and will certainly not want to let this opportunity pass.
The July uprising was crowned with success thanks to the participation of a wide range of social forces. As in other struggles against autocratic regimes, the popular aspiration was that of freedom, largely expressed in rather vague and abstract terms. In other words, this was not a movement guided by clearly defined ideological positions.
The students initially protested for reform of the quota system, but state repression triggered a mass uprising involving large sections of the Bangladeshi working and middle classes, culminating in the uprising that swept Hasina out of power. The students have won the trust of the population and will have to chart the way forward.
We can certainly hope that the spirit of the student movement will help to foster a much clearer awareness of the nature of a transformative agenda. As well as demands for democratic elections and the rule of law, the main points of this agenda will include economic gains such as higher wages and better social protections, as well as action on climate justice – Bangladesh is immensely vulnerable to the impact of climate change. The interim government or its likely successors cannot be relied upon to address any of these challenges.
In the long term, the events of July will only lead to a positive outcome if the working class and other oppressed groups are able to play a leading role, overcoming the religious and ethnic divisions of Bangladeshi society. If students have started the revolution, workers will have to see that it succeeds. Herein lies the greatest challenge for the Left in Bangladesh.
This article is translated from Inprecor
Art (50) Book Review (104) Books (106) Capitalism (65) China (76) Climate Emergency (97) Conservative Government (90) Conservative Party (45) COVID-19 (44) Economics (37) EcoSocialism (49) Elections (81) Europe (44) Fascism (54) Film (49) Film Review (61) France (68) Gaza (55) Imperialism (97) Israel (109) Italy (43) Keir Starmer (50) Labour Party (108) Long Read (40) Marxism (47) Palestine (138) pandemic (78) Protest (145) Russia (322) Solidarity (126) Statement (46) Trade Unionism (132) Ukraine (324) United States of America (124) War (352)