The Awami League has lost office in Dhaka after just over q15 years of uninterrupted rule, and its leader, Sh Hasina Wazed, has resigned, and fled to India. Instead pf resigning and handing over t0 a Cabinet member as Acting PM, she handed over to the Chief of Army Staff, who had himself taken over only in June, She thus turned the present change into a military coup, and revived memories of Ayub Khan, who resigned as Pakistan’s President in 1968, but instead of handing over to the National Assembly Speaker (who was an East Pakistani) handed over to the Commander-in-Chief, Gen Yahya Khan as President and CMLA/ It does represent something pf an advance in Bangladesh, because previous coups, notably the ones removing Sh Mujibur Rehman and President Ziaur Rehman, had involved their assassination.
This does involve the most direct intervention by the military since Lt Gen H/M. Ershad’s takeover. The last intervention was in the form of backing for the President’s extension of the caretaker government to two years during the 2006-3008 crisis, which ended only with the election of the Awami League to power. Once the caretaker provision was ended, Sh Hasina won all three ensuring elections handily. First, the quotas issue arose, with students all over the country protesting the quotas in government jobs for descendants pf 1971 War veterans, which was widely seen as a bacldooor way for the Awami League to retain loyalties indefinitely. After the students were apparently cowed down after over 300 were killed by police firing, protests broke out again last week, with about 100 killed countrywide, but now with a wider scope: removal of the government. League supporters claimed the opposition BNP and its allies were behind the protests, and they might be right, but there was no other way they could have to oust the government.
One thing is clear: Banpartists around the world should be encouraged. Whether army officers in South America or Africa feel the need to save their country, lovers of democracy should also remember that popular protests as in Bangladesh mean the military cannot be relied on to keep someone in power if there is no popular consent. Meanwhile, what of Bangladesh? The previous experiment left Sh Hasina competing with Begum Khaleda Zia, only. While both ladies are well over 70, they both have sons waiting in the wings, who are respectively 52 and 58. Even if new leadership is thrown up, it will be inexperienced, which is not a good way of running democracy.
