Come January 2024, and who will win in Bangladesh?

Amitava Mukherjee

(The author is a Kolkata-based senior journalist and commentator)

The coming election in Bangladesh has suddenly become too important for India. The reason lies in the Maldives. Mohammed Muizzu of the pro-China People’s National Congress has won the presidential election. After winning the election, Muizzu has declared that he will remove the Indian military personnel stationed in the archipelago state. This statement foretells the strategic loss that New Delhi has suffered at the hands of Beijing in the Indian Ocean region. The loss in the Maldives is serious.

So, New Delhi must be watching with some trepidation the developments in Bangladesh before the poll. India is always a matter of intense speculation in Bangladesh. This time also, Awami League (AL) leaders are dropping, rightly or wrongly, public hints that New Delhi is on the side of Hasina Wazed’s party. True, India has a historical relationship with the Awami League. But in international politics, national interest acts as the paramount consideration. New Delhi is keeping a studied silence over affairs in Bangladesh. This is natural because commenting on the Bangladeshi electoral scenario will be tantamount to poking one’s nose into other people’s affairs. But is India really keeping her fingers crossed?

Meanwhile, the scenario in Bangladesh is fluid. Sensing the approaching election, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has upped the ante by holding rallies and demonstrations. The tense situation is reflected in Hasina Wazed’s reactions to Khaleda Zia’s expressed wish to go abroad for treatment. For it, Hasina has also come under criticism from some senior members of the press. Mahfuz Anam, the respected editor of The Daily Star newspaper, has quoted Hasina in his column. As given by Anam Hasina, “She (Khaleda) is 80 years old; death is imminent at this age; and she is also sick, so why this hullabaloo?” Then what did Obaidul Quader, the general secretary of the AL, mean when he said, “khela hobe”? Remember, this was the catchphrase of the Trinamul Congress in West Bengal before the last state assembly election?

Still, Hasina Wazed is the most popular leader in Bangladesh. This is borne out by a very recent survey of the International Republican Institute (IRI). The reason is Hasina’s success in matters of building new infrastructure and launching developmental works. However, the same survey found that general people are pessimistic about the AL government’s economic performance. We may quote from a commentary by the European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS): “The IRI survey found that economic issues had been driving the pessimism in Bangladesh, and 51 percent of the respondents said that the economy was doing poorly. Bangladeshis are also frustrated with politics, and ordinary citizens believe that political and civic institutions are not protecting their interests. Others cited corruption, a serious issue across all of South Asia, as the single most important problem in the country. Even civil society was viewed negatively, with 62 percent saying civic groups represent the interests of elites”.

To what extent can we say that the ‘soft underbelly’ of the Awami League government is going to mar its electoral prospects? Mismanagement of the country’s administration is there. Corruption is also there. Still, it is under question whether the opposition, mostly led by the BNP, presents much hope or not. Referring to an article (one on the Bangladesh situation co-authored by David Hoogstra, a programme manager at the IRI), the EFSAS paper commented,” The Bangladeshi public’s pervasive pessimism appears to be boosting the opposition’s popularity but has not yet substantially weakened the Sheikh Hasina government. About 70 percent of Bangladeshis say the Prime Minister is doing a good job, and majorities approve of the government’s performance on various policy issues, from access to drinking water to improving education”.

But Hasina Wazed may find it a bit difficult to focus on infrastructural and other developmental projects alone. She must tidy up the economy, which is suffering from high inflation and several other ailments. Faiz Ahmed Taiyeb, a Bangladeshi columnist, thinks that the country’s total external debt increased to nearly USD 96.25 billion at the end of December 2022. Referring to a World Bank report, Taiyeb has said that in just 10 years, the country’s outstanding foreign debt has tripled. In 2017, Bangladesh had to shell out USD 2.28 billion to service external debt. In 2021, it rose to USD 5.69 billion, growing 2.5 times. It means that Bangladesh is bleeding profusely in financial terms.

But politics in Bangladesh is now so volatile that contrary opinions have come out quickly, realising fully well that economic issues are going to play a vital role in deciding the fate of the electoral outcome. Here, the debt-to-GDP ratio is an important indicator. According to one group of opinion, obviously close to the Awami League, the year 2013 witnessed the highest debt-to-GDP ratio of 25.16 percent. But since then, it has declined. It became 14.22 percent in 2017, only to rise again to 20.77 percent in 2022. This group of opinion asserts that of the 42 Asian countries, Bangladesh’s position is 30th on this count, and Bangladesh’s debt-to-GDP ratio is much lower than that of Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, Thailand, and India.

But undeniably, Bangladesh’s economic condition is bad. Its state structure has not been able to absorb the shocks of the Ukraine crisis. As a result, Dhaka witnessed an exponential rise in the prices of petrol and diesel last year, leading to widespread public protests. The country’s foreign currency reserves have declined from USD 48 billion in 2021 to below USD 32.2 billion in January this year, leading to a severe curtailment in the country’s ability to import. There is no doubt that Bangladesh’s financial base is wobbly.

BNP’s principal demand is election under a caretaker government. However, the party will find it difficult to defend the claim as the Bangladesh Supreme Court has already declared the caretaker government system unconstitutional. Moreover, BNP is plagued by internal dissent. There is a strong rumour that the Dhaka-based leadership of the party often does not see eye to eye with the views of Tareq Rahaman, the self-exiled acting chairman of the party. It is common knowledge that the top leadership of the BNP wanted to boycott the 2018 election but later on participated, fearing strong internal dissent. A similar thing happened when the BNP leadership decided to boycott the swearing-in ceremonies of only the six MPs it could return but backtracked later on, facing some sort of rebellion.

Now it is a big question whether, with Tareq Rahaman living abroad and Khaleda Zia being seriously ill, the BNP will be able to give any serious fight to the Awami League. There are instances where many senior-level party functionaries of the BNP have contested different tiers of elections as independent candidates, defying party whips. Will it happen this time again? Soon, the BNP will have to decide on a clear-cut strategy to face any probable schism within the party. But it is still not in sight.

Still, the opposition parties’ meetings are drawing large crowds. This should be a cause for concern for the Awami League because Bangladeshi voters are basically sentimental in nature, and the size of public meetings is a reliable indicator of public sentiment.