Politics in Bangladesh matters to me.  Politics in Bangladesh might matter to you.  But why should the U.S. government worry about politics in Bangladesh?

I have at least 2 arguments in response to that question.

The first response attaches to ongoing developments in the attempt to establish regional security in South Asia, to a) support security and development in Pakistan by some kind of a mechanism of positive contagion or b) serve as a bulwark against anarchy in Pakistan.  The domino effect, if it does exist, in some new-founded form might require some kind of a cut-off, a sidling push, if South Asia is to maintain some semblance of geo-political stability.  If this scenario cuts at all, analysts in the U.S. might do well to think about how Bangladesh might help the U.S government. support its objective for regional security.  And there is ample reason to think that Bangladesh might serve this purpose exceedingly well.   I’ll have more to say about this argument in a forthcoming piece.

The second response attaches to regional cooperation.  That was the objective of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India, a visit that has become, predictably, the subject of inter-party politicking.   Philip Bowring, an Asia analyst published an excellent op-ed piece in the New York Times on the occasion of Hasina’s visit.  He argues that both Bangladesh and India have mutual interests in cooperating on security and trade.  India gains by strengthening bonds with a bordering country that could help disrupt –and has already deterred– increasing calls for and moves toward separatism in India’s northeast states.  Bowring argues that Hasina’s return to power  is India’s best excuse to draw ever closer to Bangladesh.  He writes:

“Her Awami League has long been seen as less suspicious of India than the rival Bangladesh National Party of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia. She has bought some Indian good will by arresting and handing over to India the chairman of the separatist United Liberation Front of Assam. Her government is also seen as less likely to turn a blind eye to Islamic militants. But for her own credibility she must get something meaningful in return if good relations with India are to be a vote winner at home.”

And that means Bangladesh must be able to re-negotiate tariff reduction and other trade barriers with India.  Moreover, he writes,  the entire core of energy import and export must be re-structured so that Bangladesh can benefit in the longer term.

Bowring writes:

“Bangladesh in turn needs to be more open to Indian investment generally and development of its gas industry in particular, which have long been stymied by nationalism and corruption. Likewise both countries have long hurt each other by impeding transit rights and thwarting the full use of rail and river links that date back to British rule. India also has been frustrated by Dhaka’s unwillingness to be a conduit for piping Myanmar gas to energy-short eastern India.”

Indeed, oil and gas exploration in the Bay of Bengal is frustrated by lack of agreed boundaries between Bangladesh, India and Myanmar”

Finally, Bangladesh in the person of Sheikh Hasina, now has the instrument to deal sensibly with India on the contested water sharing rights over the numerous rivers that flow through both India and Bangladesh.  Happily, the two respective governments has already taken up these issues on their docket and are urgently trying to implement these moves for mutual benefit.  

Through assurances for aid and cover to both governments, the Obama adminstration needs to ensure that the deals go through, more in the letter than in the spirit of the agreements.  Successful mutual cooperation between the two countries will entail no less than the successful delegation of cooperative politics to two countries that have long circled around the same shared genealogy that has now committed at least one other South Asian country–Pakistan– to a near-death spiral.

The Awami League led government is responding to the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami’s ringing claims that the joint agreements recent signed by Bangladeshi and Indian leaders are detrimental to Bangladesh’s national interests. 

The Foreign Minister Dr. Dipu Moni declared that the joint communiqué signed by the leaders of Bangladesh and India “would be a public document soon. We believe in transparency and through practicing it religiously, we will prove that we are a pro-people government,”

Part of her claim was that the deal signed with the Indian government was pro-people because the deal follows the letter and spirit of the Awami League election manifesto.  And since the manifesto is the promise the Awami League campaigned on to win office, the Leagues overwhelming victory in the December 2008 elections implies that the Prime Minister had the public mandate to agree on just the deal that was signed between the two leaders.

Furthermore, she claimed quite apart from the content of the deal, the fact that the deal was made signals a broad change in the foreign relations between the two countries.  Only those with an oppositional mind-set would find the deal objectionable.  This the case because one of the main objectives of the communique is to affirm the need for greater cooperation to combat regional terrorism.  Hence the document should be viewed not simply as a bilateral.  Rather it should be evaluated from the context of regional South Asian cooperation on terrorism and economic and political development.

Dr. Dipu Moni said “To combat terrorism, the USA, the EU and other parts of the world are now working together. However, both Bangladesh and India have agreed that we need to join our hands together to fight terrorism as it is a great threat to Bangladesh also,”

Though Dr. Dipu Moni urged the opposition party to separate out politics from policy on the issue of regional cooperation, it is quite apparent that the Awami League leadership has been stirred into action to defend its policy of rapprochment with India.   After all, the document is publicly available to anyone interested in seeking it out.  Why then would the government make public declarations to make a public a document that is already publicly available?  To combat the whiff of gated-off private back room deals between the two leaders.   This is not cheap talk amounting to smoke and noise.  Though costless the move is a signal: by moving to silence the opposition on this issue the government has signaled the opposition’s strength.

Begum Khaleda Zia has accused the Awami League government of selling out Bangladeshi’s interests in favor of  security and India’s regional ascendancy. Insisting that she has not taken a stand against India, per se, she nevertheless claimed that Sheikh Hasina had given away Bangladesh;s national sovereignty during her state visit to India.

The Daily Star reports that in a written statement that she read out during a press conference at her Gulshan office she reared:

“The prime minister could not bring anything. She returned from Delhi with an empty hand…She gave all the things to India.

“Whatever happened in this tour has gone in India’s favour and against the interest of Bangladesh. The prime minister’s India visit was not only a failure but also a harmful event for the country,” Khaleda said.

Asked how she had concluded that anything in the agreements might be harmful to Bangladeshi sovereinty and security given that she had not read the content of the agreements, Begum Zia claimed:

“It can be understood easily if you go through the joint communiqué.”

Moreover,  ”The 50-point joint declaration proved that the prime minister has sold the country’s interests. She unilaterally gave her consent to allow India to use the seaports, road, rail and waterways and assurance about supporting India’s bid for permanent membership in the Security Council. She also gave the nod for building the Tipaimukh dam and providing permanent transit facilities to India.”

Further, “A country of 15 crore people cannot be run only by renting out roads and ports. Our industrial sector will lose competitiveness if India gets port and transit facilities,“

Nevertheless, Begum Zia argued: “We are not anti-India. We are opposing the policy of making everything favourable to India and India-oriented. That is why we are rejecting the joint communiqué and people have to be united against it.”

That Bangladesh is making favorable deals with India that will disproportionally hurt is not obvious by simply reading off the joint communique. The communique does suggest that India is investing heavily in Bangladesh and that Bangladesh will stand to reap the rewards of that investment. This is a mutually advantageous move, one that will benefit both parties through time. Any argument that one party or another will be disproportionally advantaged depends on contingent facts that have yet to materialize. Begun Zia stands on rickety ground if she thinks that any such argument is less than sheer demagoguery.

The Awami League has yet to forcefully counter these claims, so as of this writing, an Awami League standing committee member has claimed that Khaleda Zia is not thinking about her country’s interests.

Her argument, or screed, is stronger yet. “People of the country are worried about the outcome of the prime minister’s India trip. The government has left no option [for us] but to forge a movement to protect our national interest, security, and independence and sovereignty,”

“I am urging all to participate in the struggle to save the country and the people and build a national unity” Begum Zia rang out. Notably, she failed to provide details about how she would go about arranging such a broadly convened national dialogue.

Predictably, Sheikh Hasina is defending  the agreements she signed in India as steps in the right direction toward solving the manifold political economic problems that plague Bangladesh.   This is because, predictably, the BNP is claiming that the agreements signed so far amount to cheap talk and that Sheikh Hasina has failed to protect Bangladesh’s national interest.  

The Daily Star reports that at a press conference Sheikh Hasina claimed that the opposition BNP is interested only in spreading falsehood and antagonizing their border neighbor India.  She further claimed that though she was interested in looking beyond partisan politics the BNP “have become habituated to spreading falsehood and propaganda.”

Hasina reassured her supporters and notable commentators that she would never pursue policy dialogue that might threaten Bangladesh’s national interest.  

She claimed:

“During my visit, I demanded fair share of water of all 54 common rivers. I never shy away from speaking for my country and people. But when she [Khaleda Zia] visited India during her rule, she forgot to talk about our rightful share of river water,” 

Looking beyond immediate concerns, Sheikh Hasina claimed that partly due to her effort Bangladesh will soon become one of the most stable South Asian countries.  She argued that peace and stability would emerge as economic growth cuts into Bangladesh’s deeply rooted troubles. Moreover, she claimed as this government’s socio-economic program works into people’s lives, the world will take note of Bangladesh’s accomplishments.  

Her claims are less than an arms length away from the truth.

The onset of closer relations between Bangladesh and India has set off quite a bit of celebratory humming in the blogosphere concerned with South Asia–some of it distinctly emanating from my neck of the woods. Though the new developments are promising, nevertheless we may be calling the game too soon. Whatever the merits of the new agreements and though some of the agreements do spell out contingency plans–principally the agreement to share electricity–I’ve seen nothing that admits to costs borne if one or another of these agreements should fall.

And that’s the issue: if it is costless for any party to enter into an agreement, then any one party can defect from that accord as long as any other state of the world obtains a better outcome for that party. Indeed, though the visit has been wildly successful, already some of the difficult negotiations have fallen off the track.  The difficult talks on the water sharing deal on Teesta River that runs through India and Bangladesh fell apart at the secretary level.  Without mutual costs borne, it is not clear how long these deals will be something more than signed documents.

Still, attention must be paid to the milestones already reached.

We’ve only just begun/Before the rising sun we fly/ So many roads to choose/ We start out walking/ And learn to run/ And yes! We’ve just begun.

The Carpenter’s pedigree is gleefully appropriate today: Bangladeshi domestic and foreign has been a planar patchwork of sawed and hacked retro-fitted pieces of woodwork and sawdust.  The Awami League might now lay claim to re-arrange the country’s working affairs by retooling afresh for the long sly-crafted job ahead.

The Daily reports this piece of welcome breaking news:

“India tonight announced 1 billion dollar line of credit for infrastructure development in Bangladesh.”

“This is the highest one time credit by India to any country.”

“This was conveyed to visiting Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina by her Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh during the delegation level talks led by them”

This news follows a diplomatically productive day.  The Bangladesh and India deledgation have signed 4 agreements on issues ranging as widely as mutual cooperation on counter-terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking and commodity transfers.   The Daily Star reports that:

“[Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh], leading their countries at the delegation-level talks at the Hyderabad House from 5:30pm to 7:30pm, had a detailed discussion covering the entire gamut of bilateral issues with particular focus on terrorism, security, connectivity, trade and investment, border concerns and sharing of water and power resources.”

Perhaps most interestingly, under the agreement on organized crime, indiviuduals convicted of crimes in either country may serve out their terms in their native country.  This seems like a patently unnecessary move from a criminal justice perspective.  Strikingly, perhaps, this move is meant to rebut and obviate the argument of right-leaning opposition parties in both countries that the ruling party delegation is trading out national sovereingty for a few billion dollars.

On th occasion of the Hasina’s visit, P.M. Singh proclaimed that:

“India stands ready to be a full and equal partner in the realisation of your vision of social change and economic development for Bangladesh.

He continued, “India seeks to build a new future with Bangladesh. The time has come to chart a new path. We are ready to pursue a bold vision for our relations, based on mutual respect and mutual benefit”

“Our two peoples want peace, security and prosperity. We should move forward to achieve these common goals for ourselves and for all the people of South Asia.”

This is very good news.  But we’ve only just begun.

Let’s ring in the new year with forward looking news.

Bangladesh and India are moving closer to politics in concert.  The cabinet approved a memorandum of understanding that Dhaka and New Delhi would import and export electricity from each other over the long term.

The Daily Star reports:

“A meeting of the cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also approved a proposal to amend policy guidelines for expanding private sector’s participation in generating power.”

“Hasina asked the authorities concerned to increase scopes for the private sector to generate power to meet the growing demand of electricity. She also directed them to fix the price of electricity on the basis of production cost.”

The move puts together a set of policies that mechanically induces greater opportunities for cooperation. For example, setting up this deal requires that a new electrical grid be put in place to deliver connectivity between the countries.

Moreover, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has instructed the Bangladesh Police to move toward becoming a policing force that is capable of dealing with Islamic militancy and terrorism.   She stressed the need for meritocratic values and public spiritedness of police conduct.  This is promising news.  It might imply that the Awami League is paying attention the the United Nations and NGO’s like International Crisis Group.  Secondly it implies that Sheikh Hasina views terrorism as a police matter, not an issue that might require military mobilization.  Both implications are worthy of attention and quiet celebration.

The mourning of Ashura has come and gone, and not a whimper in Bangladesh.  As readers of the New York Times and Guardian know Ashura is the commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.  The events of that date in 680 AD are considered to have created the fault lines between the epochal political and social contest between Sunni’s and Shia.  Unhappily, of course, those countless readers also know all too well, that at least 40 innocent people have died in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city during a Shite mourning procession.

That Sunni’s extremist are being blamed is not surprising.  What is surprising is that the attack should have occurred at all.  Muslims are now killing Muslims with greater intensity that would seem justified under Jihad.  Though the extremist Sunni groups that constitute teh Pakistani Taliban have always considered the Shiite population apostates, their definition of apostate has shifted to include any group outside of their constitution who they think would support the apostate government in Islamabad.

In a surprising turn, Iraq seems to overcome its own sectarian history at least for this year, though 4 individuals have been killed in attacks in Northern Iraq.  Contrast that to the pronouncements of peace and amity by  the three leading politicians in Bangladesh.   Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, President Zillur Rahman, and oppostion leader Khaleda Zia have each invoked peace and harmony as the step forward in national reconciliation.  It remains to be seen whether those words can translate to facts on the ground or whether they are only so much cheap talk.

The Shia constitute less than 5% of the population Bangladesh.  It is surely because of this demographic fact that Islamic jihadi extremists haven’t taken up a more militant course against that minority.  It is also because of this fact that almost every politician in Bangladesh can rally to the commemoration of Imam Hussein’s martyrdom and express his sacrifice as their own.

I am concerned with the effect of intra-party democracy and candidate selection on the quality of democratic policy making in Bangladesh.  Though not as well-studied in politics as other more “titillating” topics like justice, candidate selection is the dominant  issue in any practical study of a functioning democracy.  To that end, it may serve us well to glance at classical democratic theory for some thoughts that may be relevant to the study at hand.  

To begin, allow me to marshal, Adam Smith, who in his justly famous Wealth of Nations wrote:

“According to the system of  natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to…first, the duty of protecting the society form the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, so far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice of oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice, and thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain.” Smith (1776, 1976) Book IV Chapter IX)

Consider that as a practical matter, the most recent sovereigns in Bangladesh would not be able to meet Smith’s prescription.  The battling Begums have acted from a purely partisan ground where each party aligned with one or the other contested the election and promised to erase the immediately receding history and then netted a set of policies that served only to negate the policies of the previous government.    Perhaps the fault lies in the system of representative government?  Perhaps these two sovereigns have brought about publicly valued policies?  This argument would have legs, if it were at all coherent to list any set of policies that might be thought to be in accord with “the public’s interest.” Indeed, representative government though far reaching in action and consequences presupposes very little coherent institutional design.  Representative government only requires that agents represent the interests of their principals, the people.  Usually this is done by holding elections that are timed according to a predetermined schedule.  Of course, this is a principle that politicians in Bangladesh have failed to maintain.

In a representative system of government the sovereign is chosen by competitive elections and his incentives are structured so that it is rational for him to rule and still pursue as his main objective the interests of the citizenry, however understood.   Hence, according to Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote extensively about the design and experience of democracy in America,:

“The President is chosen for four years, and he may be re-elected so that the chances of a future adminstration may inspire him with hopeful undertakings for the public good and give him the means to carry them into execution.” de Tocqueville, 1835, pg. 121.

It is clear then that if politics is coordinated through party formation, and parties are interested in winning elections and governing, then they have to institute procedure that will help them select the best candidates who can offer them cyclical return to power.  Indeed, the same objective, viewed through the perspective of public spiritedness is the principal function of the design of government: the selection of principled candidates who are able to rule in favor of the interest of citizens.  James Madison argues that,

“The aim of every constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue the common good of society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they contune to hold their public trust.” Madison (The Federalist papers, LVII).

It should be clear that during their sequential turns in power, neither the Awami League or the BNP have served the needs of their citizens or have maintained policies that might be said to have bettered the lives of their people to a measurable degree.  The BNP, indeed has allowed in foreign agitators to deflect attention from its own fundamentalist power base. Moreover, it is not apparent to me, whether either party is seriously interested in governing for the long term; like in Pakistan, it may be that each candidate in office views his tenure as one that will collapse through predictably unpredictable shocks: what is the use then to govern in in publicly disinterested manner?  

Finally consider that it may be that politicians in Bangladesh do not suppose that a career in politics in remuneratively worthwhile.  As a result, politicians in Bangladesh have no choice but to select their favorite cronies.  This analysis may be true for individual politicians, but here the fallacy of composition is at work and it is not likely to be the case that the story holds for all politicians.  After all Carthage had its Hannibal; declining Rome had its Marcus Aurelius.  Rather it is more likely the case that because the pie to be distributed is so small, incumbent politicians have skewed the incentive structure to reward agreeable cronies and have instituted large costs to entry in politics.   To maintain bias in institutional design and governance mid-level party functionaries have gone along with their superiors and have repeatedly acquiesced to the leadership of the battling Begums.

The whole design of party politics might collapse if it should come to pass that one of the Begums were assassinated or– as in their fondest wish– passed on quietly into the night. If only to avoid that kind of catastrophe, both parties might do well to introduce greater intra-party democracy into its rough political milieu.

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.