No, Bangladesh is not a Democracy!

A few days ago a video, from #WorldEconomicForum, was doing rounds on social media where it showed the economic progress of #Bangladesh and the factors behind it. Amongst those who shared this video was Khawaja Asif, of PMLN, and he shared with this caption...

What a profound statement, no? Well, it would’ve been if it wasn’t for the invention of the internet and the ability to "fact check" any kind of information, online, but more on that a little later on.

Upon seeing Khawaja sb’s tweet his colleague Ahsan Iqbal sprung into action and wrote a very heartfelt answer of his own,

Strangely though; of all the major factors behind Bangladesh’s economic growth (in the video) #democracy is not even mentioned once, clearly WEC (World Economic Forum) knows something that Khawaja Asif and Ahsan Iqbal didn't.

Play the video and see it for yourself;

As you can see: Bangladesh’s economy took off in the last decade meaning it all started in 2009 when Sheikh Hasina became the Prime Minister of Bangladesh. Sheikh Hasina is still the PM of Bangladesh thanks to her emphatic win in the 2018 General Elections, Aljazeera’s Mehdi Hassan summarized her win in a spectacular fashion...

listen from 2:31

“Sheikh Hasina is now winning the kind of percentage victories that Bashar al-Assad and Kim Jong-un win...96%.” And Mehdi Hassan is not alone in pointing this out.

In an opinion piece for “Foreign Policy” Summit Ganguly wrote,

“...before the closing weeks of the campaign, when the harassment of the opposition was at its peak, other developments demonstrated the government’s lurch toward authoritarianism. As early as February 2018, the regime had jailed Khaleda Zia, the leader of the opposition BNP, on charges of embezzlement…even the Election Commission was compromised...The Awami League’s questionable electoral victory is bad news for Bangladesh, where it will aid the consolidation of an authoritarian political order with a democratic facade.”

Besides journalists and academics, the same pattern can be found in research conducted by esteemed bodies such as the "BTI Project" that “analyzes and evaluates whether and how developing countries and countries in transition are steering social change toward democracy and a market economy.” This is how democracy in Bangladesh outlined in their 2018 report;

"What is more alarming, however, is that in Bangladesh, Lebanon, Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Uganda there have been five regime changes to autocracy (and conversely two unstable democratization processes in Burkina Faso and Sri Lanka). These five authoritarian regressions, however, do not mark an abrupt change of system towards dictatorship but stand for a continuous and increasing erosion of democratic standards. With a view to free and fair elections and the separation of powers, this erosion process has now reached a level that no longer permits classification as democracy."

“No longer permits classification as a democracy” OUCH! So under the rule of Sheikh Hasina Wajed; Bangladesh is working as a fully functional dictatorship and the world is writing about it for quite some time now. Though sadly here in the “land of the pure” nobody is bothered about the facts anymore, be it a politician or an economist.

In June this year, T2F Karachi organized an event entitled “Ye Watan Humaara Hai 3: IMF & the Economic Future of Pakistan” and Akbar Zaidi, one of “Pakistan's prolific political economists”, was a part of a highly esteemed panel. During the QnA session something caught my eye;

@43:15

According to Akbar Zaidi: The Bangladesh army doesn't meddle in the democratic process anymore and that is the reason for their growing GDP. By the sound of those claps, it is fair to assume that this bit of information was very well received by the audience.

But it seems that Mr. Zaidi does not read “Wallstreet Journal” very often because in a report, entitled "Bangladesh Leader Wins Third Term Amid Reports of Violence, Intimidation." the writer painted a very glaring picture of democracy in Bangladesh,

“Academics and advocates for good governance say her (Sheikh Hasina) opponents were subjected to violence and intimidation ahead of the elections, with thousands of members of the opposition arrested, according to Human Rights Watch, a nongovernmental organization that monitors accusations of human-rights abuses.”

Science tells us that lying is an embedded attribute of being a human because it helps us escape the bitterness of reality but lying to an extent where you are selling an authoritarian regime as a democracy is an obscene practice and in this day and age fact-checking is a tool that is easily available to even a nomad like me and when the truth comes out you don’t even get a fig leaf to cover your shame!

PS: In Jan 2020 - The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index published their annual report on "Global Democracy Index and here is how Pak and Bangla looked side by side,

Both democracies are graded as "Hybrid Regimes."