Key Socioeconomic and Political Developments in Bangladesh

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Key Socio-economic and Political Developments in
Bangladesh
First BIPSS- ISAS Roundtable on
Singapore-Bangladesh Relations

• S. Mahmud Ali, Ph.D.

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Introduction

• A land of 56,977 sq mile/147,579 sq.km territory,
  Bangladesh was home to 144.50m people in July
  2008, expected to rise to 158.96m in July 2015
  (1077 per sq.km in 2015).
• A GDP of 67.7bn at the end of June 2007, growing
  at 6.2 annually, reached 71.89bn at the end of
  June 2008. Per capita GDP approximately 497.50.
  Official publications claim higher figures.
• This level of poverty, finite land and resources,
  and growing population would rationally require
  focusing national and governmental attention on
  addressing demographic, economic and
  environmental challenges.
• Why has the reality of Bangladeshs political
  experience been so different?

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Socio-economic developments (BBS, Statistical
Pocketbook, January 2009)
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Socio-economic developments (BBS, Statistical
Pocketbook, January 2009)
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Socio-economic developments (BBS, Statistical
Pocketbook, January 2009)
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General economic trends

• Present Governments budgetary proposals expected
  to be presented before National Assembly in June
  CTG budget modified by elected government in
  operation now.
• In 2007-08, international commodity prices,
  especially relating to food and fuel, rose. As an
  importer of both, Bangladesh faced significant
  difficulties.
• The government devoted 13.4 percent of GDP to
  public spending in July 2006-June 2007 CTG
  raised this to 15.9 percent of GDP in July
  2007-June 2008 mainly to combat effects of
  rising food- and fuel prices. That trend
  continued in following FY.
• Still, in early 2009, 58 percent of Bangladeshi
  families malnourished.

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General economic trends

• Coping mechanisms partially protected Bangladesh
  from global recession
• Financial institutions poorly integrated into
  global financial/investment processes
• Falling commodity prices especially
  of foodstuff and energy
• Agricultural production significantly
  aided economic activities
• Dangers ahead are nonetheless increasingly
  apparent
• Demand for Bangladeshi exports, especially RMG,
  falling in US/EU markets
• Demand for Bangladeshi labour in the
  Gulf/South-East Asia tapering off
• Resultant convergence of falling remittances
  and rising unemployment
• Intellectual capacity and organisational
  capability exist central bankers aware that an
  annual rate of GDP growth at 7 percent sustained
  over five consecutive years can generate
  self-sustaining momentum of production,
  investment and consumption, but Bangladesh has
  not seen GDP growth of 7 percent sustained for
  even two or three years. The political system
  must provide an explanation.

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Key Political Developments

• October 2006 as BNP-led coalition steps down,
  political disturbances begin, leading to some
  violence
• 11 January 2007 Army commanders, encouraged by
  OECD donors led by Tuesday Club force President
  to step down from self-appointed post of Chief
  Adviser
• A state of emergency declared, a technocratic CTG
  appointed, a campaign against corruption
  mounted eventually around 200 politicians,
  family-members, and businessmen detained some
  charged.
• Detention and interrogation of untouchables
  like the two Begums and close relatives has a
  shock effect but eventually, many detainees are
  released under unclear circumstances and rumours
  of money changing hands become rife.
• Despite stringent emergency measures and initial
  apparent popular approval of efforts to recast
  political landscape along rational lines, by
  mid-2007, urban restiveness visible student
  violence on major campuses triggered by minor
  incident forces army to withdraw from a key
  campus President eventually pardons teachers and
  students held.

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Key Political Developments

• CTG/Army efforts to pursue a minus two formula,
  establish new parties under alternative leaders,
  and force major parties to reform fail Begums
  intransigent Hasina and AL more amenable to a
  negotiated arrangement Zia and BNP less willing.
• As the agreed two-year window approaches final
  quarter, CTG/Army and their sponsors acknowledge
  failure, accept elections only rational exit
  strategy, discover no election can be meaningful
  without AL and BNP participation that demanded
  restoration of Hasina and Zia to leadership.
  Revolutionary changes to political landscape
  abandoned.
• Anti-corruption campaign wound down major
  complaints against leaders either withdrawn by
  plaintiffs, or inactivated High Court questions
  legality of Emergency

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Key Political Developments

• Election Commission does make changes new
  electoral rolls, photo-ID cards, transparent
  ballot boxes.
• Political party registration processes force
  parties to accept changes to their constitution,
  theoretical dilution of the leaders powers,
  selection of candidates by local party organs
  rather than by central fiat, de-linking of party
  from student- and trades-union wings, limits on
  campaign expenses.
• All registered parties accept new terms and
  conditions on paper but refuse to make actual
  changes 87 percent of all MPs elected to the
  9th parliament broke campaign expenditure rules.
• Awami League sweeps to a landslide victory in
  polls held on 29 December 2008.

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December 2008 parliamentary polls

• 300 parliamentary seats contested by 1,538 (141
  independents) candidates
• 38 parties registered under new electoral rules
• 81m-plus voters voting at 35,000-plus polling
  stations
• 86 turn out.

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Final results of the 2008 General Elections
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Post-election histrionics

• BNP allegations of election engineering
  delayed taking of oaths
• Differences over seating arrangements BNPs
  refusal to join Assembly
• Awami Leagues offer of Deputy Speakership,
  committee chair, compromise
• Campus violence, BCL-JCD, BCL-ICS, BCL-BCL
• Hasinas resignation from BCL chair continuing
  factional fighting
• State Minister for law, Justice and Parliamentary
  Affairs accuses Chairman of Anti-corruption
  Commission of illegal action and abuses Gen
  Mashuud resigns
• Hasina asks Zia to abandon leased home in the
  garrison cancels lease
• Massive reshuffle of civil service, police and
  army officers
• Governments initiative on beginning prosecution
  of war criminals

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BDR mutiny biggest single bloody challenge to
Bangladeshi state and government

• Narratives diverge 57 senior and mid-ranking
  officers killed in a few hours
• DG BDR called PM other officers called Army and
  RAB commanders
• PMs determined political approach refusal to
  army deployment
• Negotiations and amnesty delegation to
  Peelkhana some surrender and rescue
• Mutineers refusal to surrender PMs carrot
  stick troop deployment
• Mutineers and other BDR troops flee bodies
  found mutilation, rape, looting

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BDR mutiny biggest single bloody challenge to
Bangladeshi state and government

• Conspiracy theories abound (Most detailed
  elaboration in The Holiday)
• PM, ministers speak of deep conspiracy against
  Hasina and democracy minister mentions Islamist
  and right-wing threats, names JMB
• BNP leaders speak of deep conspiracy does not
  name source
• Jamaat-e-Islami leaders speak of conspiracy by
  Indian intelligence and AL
• Indian media cite Pakistani, Saudi, British
  intelligence, BNP and Islamists
• Impact on state cohesion, military chain of
  command, CMR severe

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Lessons not learnt

• National security, social civility, equity and a
  shared sense of justice were inextricably
  intertwined
• Governance and service-delivery had suffered
  grievously while the political elite wrangled in
  internecine feuds, fragmenting the polity,
  deepening the divisive polarisation which
  rendered consensus on even fundamental issues
  improbable, fracturing any residual societal
  cohesion and increasing fragility
• Internal divisions on such fundamental issues
  created the space inviting external actors to
  exploit them
• A price had to be paid, mostly by those who had
  no control over their circumstances
• Civil-military relations are not an esoteric
  category to be confined to academic and
  intellectual exercises they are integral to
  intra-state dynamics and have to be managed
• Bangladeshis are victims of the consequences of
  their own follies most devastatingly the
  elites focus on ritualistic power-politics as an
  instrument of acquisition by graft and a failure
  to grasp the acute urgency of elemental threats
  to collective survival.

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Conclusion Why has Bangladesh remained
perennially polarised and hence dysfunctional?
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Possible answer Elemental differences over the
definition of Bangladeshs national identity.
Built on the eastern two-thirds of Bengal,
divided on the basis of the two-nation theory
which created Pakistan, Bangladesh suffers from a
philosophical contradiction. On the one hand,
confessional differentiation the
Muslim-majority eastern Bengal became East
Pakistan. When East Pakistan rejected the
Partition and its confessional basis, logic would
have demanded an undoing of the Partition.
Building Bangladesh on East Pakistans ashes
brought together two mutually exclusive phenomena
rejection of the essence of the Partition which
had held Pakistan together, and maintenance of
the outcome of the Partition on this new-fangled
political construct.
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Validating this contradictory conjunction
eventually required the fashioning of a
Bangladeshi as opposed to Bengali national
identity for Bangladeshis relegitimising the
principle of the Partition. This ideational
sleight of hand provided a theoretical backstop
to the rise of a Bangladeshi nationalist
tendency, but its unstated result was the
transformation of India which included the
residual, non-Bangladeshi Bengal into the
mirror-image other against which Bangladesh
both distinguished itself and measured its own
performance. As it happened, an elite consensus
on this, Bangladeshs foundational value, has
eluded the country.
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Question and Answer Session
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Thank You
Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security
Studies (BIPSS)
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