A historic - but rigged - election

The ruling party in Bangladesh has won an unprecedented fourth consecutive term, amidst strong allegations of fraud and civil and human rights violations.

By Adrita Rahman

Election days in Bangladesh were always fun for me as a kid. They were national holidays – which meant plenty of time for cartoons, no homework and playing hide and seek. However, as I grew older, the meaning of election days changed. They were no longer fun because of what has happened across the country over the years. And this year’s election was different: I followed it closely, this time some 12,000 kilometers away from home. 

 Bangladesh held its general election on January 7 2024, when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina won a fourth consecutive term, making her the nation’s  longest serving leader. For the last 15 years, her leadership has transformed the country’s development on a monumental scale. We are now known as the garment hub of the world. We have experienced great economic success, with a 7.25% GDP growth rate and an economy that is worth $416 billion. The Prime Minister has also received numerous international accolades for welcoming nearly 1 million Rohingya  refugees fleeing persecution in neighbouring Myanmar.  

At the same time, the current government is notorious for the abuse of rights,  suppression of dissent, and curtailment of the freedom of press. They strategically eliminated opposition leaders before the election and imprisoned them based on arbitrary accusations of intimidation. According to the Human Rights Watch Report 2024, the government has made over 8,000 arrests in an attempt to deter its competition from qualifying in the election process. The same report also states how people criticizing the government through  social media posts have been arrested, or have “disappeared.” Journalists in Bangladesh also faced increasing attacks for exercising their right to express their opinions freely and have been injured in pre-election protests.

The polls held on January 7 were not free, fair or participatory. Experts and non-experts alike called it a one-sided election, dominated by one party. The main opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), boycotted the election in early November. BNP demanded that the Prime Minister resign before the election, and that the election be held under a neutral entity to ensure fair polls. However, none of these demands were met, compelling them to exit. One of the reasons why BNP made such a demand is rooted in history; poll results under caretaker governments were considered to be credible in the past. It also usually led to wins for the opposition party. Since its independence from Pakistan  in 1971, Bangladesh had 11 elections and only 4 were deemed as free and fair. 

Instead of making the election process fair, the government set up independent dummy candidates and artificially inflated election turnout. An hour before polls closed this month, the dashboard of the Election Commission (EC), an “independent” body that oversees the election process, stated that the turnout rate was 28% - yet just after the polls closed, EC announced that the turnout rate increased to 40%. After all the ballots were counted, dummy candidates came in second in the polls with 63 out of 300 parliamentary seats. For the first time in Bangladesh’s history, the government (with 222 seats) and the opposition are now from the same party. Ninety four percent of seats in parliament are occupied by lawmakers from the ruling party, Awami League. 

The people of Bangladesh are likely not at all surprised by the poll results. In fact, many knew before January 7 that the same party would come into power, which further deterred them from voting. That did not stop the election; with or without people’s support, the Awami League was going to win.  

However, there are positive policy changes introduced by the government that can have a great impact on Bangladesh. One of these is to increase the budget allocated in the education sector; the government wants to ensure that a greater emphasis is given to language, advanced mathematics and science in high schools to better train the students. In order to bridge the gap between the cities and the rural sides, the government has also ensured that more laboratories will be built. Women’s educational attainment and greater participation in the labour market have been two of the key goals for the Awami League. The government has promised to provide more scholarships and stipends to girls and to marginalized communities to remove their barriers to education and is gradually increasing more female teachers in educational institutes. 

The current government also envisions to shift Bangladesh from being climate change vulnerable to climate resilient. Over the years, the government has put forward 17 national policy responses in an effort to fight climate change such as National Adaptation Plan (NAP), 2022, Bangladesh Climate Fiscal Framework, 2020, National Strategy on Internal Displacement Management 2021 among many others. The win this year would mean that the government can actively work towards making this vision a reality.  

On the other hand, the Awami League government is now faced with a rapid forex reserve drop; the outflow of foreign exchange in Bangladesh is much higher than the inflow, forcing the central bank to pump dollars to mitigate this shortage. The Russian Ukraine war has led to an increase in prices of commodities like oil and gas, hurting import-dependent nations such as Bangladesh. Amidst all the allegations around the election polls, the government has to find out ways to address its currency devolution and more specifically how to tackle the current inflation rate of 7.9%. With 170 million people and around 20% of them living below the poverty line, the road ahead for the Awami League government might have a rocky start. Whether the people have gone to the voting centers or not earlier this year, they still want to be able to afford food, rent, healthcare and education. And I am keen to see how the year unfolds.  

As a citizen of Bangladesh and as an international student pursuing a degree in Public Policy, I often find myself asking questions about our politics and policy landscape. It also makes me wonder why, as a nation, we do not have a limit on the number of times a candidate can get elected as the Prime Minister. Will we always have to choose between development or democracy? Can we get out of this pseudo-democratic system, wherein democracy is practiced in name only? Will there be a day when elections in Bangladesh are not synonymous with human rights violations? Do the benefits of having the same government for 15 years bring more advantages than disadvantages? 

Bangladeshis like me cannot travel back in time and enjoy election days like we did when we were younger. But we can dream, hope and work towards a future where the system is not rigged, where human and civil rights are realized, and where democracy and development go hand in hand. 

Adrita Rahman was born and raised in Bangladesh. She has received her BSC and MSC in Economics from BRAC University and moved to Montreal in September last year to pursue an MPP degree. She worked for BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University for the last couple of years and is passionate about human-centric design solutions and the rights of marginalized communities.