Overview:
The most notable news this year in the conflicted politics of Bangladesh was the renaissance of the Awami League as a party ready to govern in a way that might give it another run at executive office in the next election cycle. After securing an overwhelmingly popular public mandate for governing Bangladesh in the December 2008 elections, the Awami League have set about fulfilling its election promises. So far, they have done a creditable job of setting about implementing reforms that were addressed in their platform and that increasingly also seem like necessary moves to ameliorate the pestilent state of politics and public policy in Bangladesh.
Along with paying lip service to democratic platitudes, including cheap talk about some new dawn of politics and history in Bangladesh and eradicating poverty, the 2008 Awami League election manifesto promised to combat terrorism; streamline the educational system and increase enrollment and literacy in primary school; curb political corruption; increase the supply of electricity in this country of chronic brown outs; and lower the rising food prices in Bangladesh. To a notable degree, fulfilling each one of those promises will have significant impact in Bangladesh’s international political economic standing. Happy news, then that the Awami League has already started to combat domestic and international terrorism by breaking apart militant terrorist cells along the Eastern border with Assam. The Awami League has started to re-align the varyingly taped together education policy to a sensible vision of Bangladesh’s future by standardizing primary school education. Finally, the government has started to negotiate with India to import electricity and has begun to develop plans to achieve power grid independence. All this bodes well for the Awami League’s re-election bid. Indeed, even though much more needs to be done, including figuring out a way to square child labor laws with domestic production, without negatively effecting economic growth, and reining in the macroeconomic the risk associated with inflation and rising food prices, it may soon come to pass that an incumbent government in Bangladesh will have been re-elected for a second term and may actually come to serve out that term.
Person of the Year
The person of greatest import in Bangladesh is, arguably, Begum Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the current leader of the Awami League and the sitting Prime Minister of the Peoples’ Republic of Bangladesh. Quite apart from having the necessary heft of character and personality, she has woven herself into the fabric of the nation’s history in a manner unlike any other living Bangladesh leader. This is principally because she promised a reckoning against those who plotted the assassination of her father and the founding leader of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The public debate, which though rankled of a predetermined verdict, forced Bangladeshis to revisit its founding history and helped the electorate re-connect that dawning history to the current reawakening of democracy in the country. Indeed, it is a measure of the gravity of that moment in Bangladeshi history that when the Supreme Court declared a guilty verdict on all individuals charged in December 2009, opposition group did not riot as many had expected.
Most Unexpected Event of 2009:
The winning candidate for the most unexpected event of 2009 is the unlikely arrest of the son of a leader of one of the main Islamist political parties in Bangladesh, in connection with a plot to attack the U.S. Embassy and the Indian Commission in Bangladesh. This arrest forced the authorities to move quickly to dismantle the cell that was implicated in the attack. The costs of inaction were too high: at risk was the U.S. government and donor agencies positive evaluation of the Awami League’s government in Bangladesh. More importantly, perhaps the arrest shed light on the international sources of domestic terrorism in Bangladesh. At last count, Islamist groups in India, Pakistan and Myanmar have been implicated in the plot and it will take a tremendous upheaval in cross-border cooperation to prosecute this case in a just and legally convincing manner.
What to Watch Out for in 2010.
Since 2008 two left leaning, originally so-considered Socialist parties have been in power in Bangladesh and India. Though the Awami League and the re-elected Congress Party of India have always held each other in mutual admiration—partly due to a shared anti-Pakistan history—the recent spate of cross-border cooperation between these two allies offers some hope of regional cooperation and stability. Most analysts expect that trend to continue and, indeed, expect quickly developing, mutually advantageous cooperation on a roster of policies to dominate the day. Indeed, Begum Sheikh Hasina Wajed was, scheduled to be on a state visit to India to discuss issues as widely ranging as cross-border electrical grids and electricity production, child trafficking and international terrorism.
Nevertheless, recent news of unrest in India might challenge the growing cooperation between the two states. If rising calls for autonomous state-hood in India has roiled day to day politics in India and if opposition parties oppose with sufficient popularity state-creation along ethnic lines, then the Congress Party might back down, contrary to its own move. To defend itself from the right, then, the Congress Party might hesitate to cooperate with Bangladeshi on issues of broadly mutual advantage.
Finally expect the Awami League government to ratchet up its anti-terrorism policies in order to plausibly reflect its growing cooperation with India on terrorism. Expect the Awami League government to highlight its rising stature as a state that can be relied on by the U.S. and NATO as a bulwark against Islamist militancy and Nativist fundamentalism. Already, these policies and the associated moves such as ensuring greater respect of the rights of minorities are bearing fruit on the international stage: NGO’s and IGO’s are according Bangladesh new respect as metric by metric, policy by policy, Bangladesh has been observed shoring up its governance structures and anti-corruption practices.
