By Foo Siew Jack
After weeks of violent demonstrations, Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to abdicate in August 2024, ending 15 years of dominant-party rule. The rollback of democratic institutions, meant to entrench the Awami League’s rule, instead worsened social and economic grievances. With the exit of an administration viewed by many as autocratic but stabilising, the future of Bangladesh now lies on the quality of its transition and consolidation.
Originally touted as amodel for democracyin the developing world, Bangladesh is one of the few Muslim-majority countries that has had substantial experience with procedural democracy. From 1991 to 2008, Bangladeshi politics was defined by intense competition between the Awami League (AL) and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Both parties enjoyed successive rotations in government during the country’s 17-year experimentation with parliamentary democracy, where the country’smostly homogenous ethnic structure,decent record of economic growthandstrong culture of student activismenabled democracy’s survival.
This halted when AL was returned to power in 2009 under Sheikh Hasina, who worked to undermine democracy by marginalising the opposition and installing a corrupt and repressive regimecharacterised byelection malpractice, judicial harassment, forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and intimidation of media and civil society organisations. During this period, the electoral playing field was so severely skewed in favour of the incumbent that the main opposition parties sat out of national elections in 2014 and 2024, twice denying the Hasina regime thelegitimising effects of authoritarian elections.
Bangladesh’s political record concords with the trends seen during thethird wave of democratisationin the 1990s, as well as to its‘reverse wave’in 2008 and thethird wave of autocratisationin 2018. Until recently, the Hasina regime was well on-track to becoming a consolidated hegemonic autocracy. But it ultimately fell short because it faced aslowing economy, deepening crisis of legitimacy and critically overstepped on repression, culminating in a powerful ‘bottom-up’ transition.
It is very unlikely that the AL will return to top form anytime soon. The reintroduction of a non-partisan ‘caretaker’ government to oversee elections should re-equilibrate interparty competition from one-party dominance back into a nominally multi-party environment and national elections are expected to be freer and fairer than in preceding decades.A strong appetite for democracy, including the willingness of rival parties toopposean AL ban and the interim government toaccept media scrutiny, are positive signs that democratic values are being normalised and upheld through mutual consensus.
The BNP appears well-positionedto be a winning alternative coalition to the AL given its previous governing experience and current status as the country’s largest opposition party. The radical right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) party, often seen as a fringe ‘third force’ aligned with the BNP, might also see a limited return to electoral politics after beingsidelined for yearsunder government decree.
BNP and JI, by virtue of their Islamic platforms, will try and speak to the91 per cent of Bangladeshis who are Sunni Muslims, even if their prospects for greater success will be constrained by their generalunpopularityamong youths in the local circuit.
The exit of the AL has led toconcernsthat conservative Islamist forces might return once again to aggravate the alreadysevere majoritarian tensionsbetween the Muslim majority and Hindu minority communities. The latter, owing to a lack of guardianship and choice today, might resort tofalling back on the ALor its remnants for representation, giving an alternative pathway for its old patron to return in a diminished capacity as anauthoritarian successor party.
BNP’s increasing dissociation with its Islamist partners might empower it to return to itscentrist-liberal rootsto reinvigorate secularist support for the party, which is consequential since the Hindu community makes upapproximately 8 per centof the population. While this move may alienate its conservative base, it will likely bolster its overall representative appeal among minorities and moderates.
Current developments suggest that Bangladeshi democracy is robust. The surprisingly weak potency of violent coercion to stop ‘people power’ and themilitary’s recalcitrance to mobilise against protestorsare clear indications that coercive tactics no longer work .
The large population of highly-educated politically active youths withlinkages to the Westshould give the new transitional government a solid foundation to call on the world’s industrialised democracies forsupport, should they need it. Neighbouring countries that have deep strategic interests in Bangladesh, likeIndia and China, will similarly try to shore up their influence by offering assistance whenever possible.
The next national election —slated to be held within the next 18 months— will be one to watch, as it will usher in a new government that may or may not come from the existing AL-BNP duopoly. But as this process becomes drawn out, there is a real risk that a military-backed‘king’s party’might emerge out of gridlock to compete in elections with disproportionate access to resources, given the speculation about the launch of anew political partywith connections to the interim government.
Clear reform, communication andtransparency, along with a close working relationship with political parties and civil society, will be key to strengthening public trust and aspiring leaders know that they must move fast to ensure that the military too can trust them well enough to credibly safeguard its corporate interests, lest it be forced tointervene with constraints on the developing political systemto obtain them. History has shown that sometimes this has been the case and certainly not in democracy’s favour.
