by M. Serajul Islam 28 December 2023
THE facts about the January 7 political event that the Election Commission is calling the 12th general election are getting, as the cliché goes, stranger than fiction. Even fiction writers will find that they are not in the same league as the commission and the ruling party that are co-authoring the tale of the next general election with less than two weeks left for the event.
The outcome of the election is now an open secret. It is known to all because the ruling party completed the seat-sharing arrangement of the next parliament with the Jatiya Party that it brought to the fray through lures and threats to make it the ‘official’ opposition. The ruling party did so under the glare of the media on December 17, the last date of the withdrawal of nomination. It took 262 seats, gave 26 seats to the Jatiya Party and six to ‘political beggars’, leaving to the commission the ‘onerous’ responsibility of announcing this arrangement formally on January 7.
The Jatiya Party contributed to the election fiction after becoming the ‘official’ opposition. It did so with the election poster of its secretary general Mujibur Rahman Chunnu. The poster announced shamelessly that the Awami League had endorsed his candidature. The foreign affairs ministry added to the stranger-than-fiction narrative by blaming the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the main opposition party, for obstructing the election. The ministry can claim a place in the Guinness Book of Records for being the first foreign ministry to participate in politics in favour of the ruling party against its main opponent in a general election.
The ambassadors of western countries have all temporarily gone backstage, perhaps to enjoy their Christmas and New Year’s vacation. They had no reason to be active on Bangladesh’s political scene because the ruling party had given them as blatant a signal as it could give that it had rejected their demand for a free, fair, peaceful and participatory general election in an outright manner.
These developments have been heaven-sent for China. China actively backed Pakistan’s military against Bangladesh’s war of liberation in 1971 because Pakistan was that time the conduit in its historical rapprochement with the United States. China was so unhappy with Bangladesh’s independence that it refrained, until August 31, 1975, from recognising Bangladesh. China, however, kept its focus on Bangladesh because of its immense value to its geopolitical and strategic interest in South Asia, particularly vis-à-vis India.
India’s successful role in the Bangladesh liberation war not only broke and weakened its nemesis Pakistan, it also weakened China, its major antagonist for supremacy in South Asia. New Delhi, thus, adopted its illogical ‘all eggs in the Awami League’s basket’ policy to institutionalise its good luck from the Bangladesh war of liberation. Under this policy, New Delhi supported the Awami League in power, to come to power when it was out of office and to retain power, openly and sometimes shamelessly as in 2014.
India, nevertheless, gained hugely from its ‘all eggs in AL basket’ which became obvious after it had supported the Awami League in the 2008 election. The AL regime gave India security assurances for its fragile northeast and landlocked states, land transit to these states also called the Seven Sisters from its mainland, without asking for reciprocity. These were concessions that New Delhi hoped for from Dhaka in its dream.
China watched Indo-Bangladesh relations under the ‘all eggs in one basket policy’ patiently. It saw hopes in the lack of reciprocity on India’s part, particularly its failure to deliver the Teesta water sharing deal after availing the dream concessions from Bangladesh. Opportunity came China’s way in 2014 after the Congress had lost power in May 2014. Sheikh Hasina visited China in June 2014 for help, afraid that the Bharatiya Janata Party would not support her regime against the US-led west if it demanded a fresh election in place of the utterly controversial January 2014 election.
Hasina welcomed the Chinese offer of investments of tens of billions of dollars, several in strategic projects, as a quid pro quo for unqualified Chinese support. Prime minister Narendra Modi and his external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj wooed the AL regime back from China and Dhaka shelved the offers of Chinese investments in strategic projects that India did not want.
China saw opportunity again in 2018 after the Bharatiya Janata Party had declined to back the Awami League in the 2018 election the way the Congress backed it in the 2014 election. China came to the Awami League’s rescue which became evident after Hasina had dropped several ministers, said to be soft towards India, off her new cabinet. She declined to meet Indian high commissioner Riva Ganguly for months and, meanwhile, gave the contract of the Sylhet airport, strategically located close to the Seven Sisters, to China over India’s expressed objection. New Delhi recalled Riva Ganguly, thereafter, prematurely.
The AL regime gave China several more large-scale economic infrastructure after it had formed a new government in January 2019. China pressed hard for the Teesta project and came close to getting it. The AL regime, nevertheless, did not give the project worth $1 billion to China because of its critical importance to India’s strategic concern. The project is adjacent to the Siliguri Corridor or the ‘chicken neck’, a narrow strip of land between Bangladesh and Nepal, the only land connection between the mainland India and the Seven Sisters. Its location is not far from India’s land border with China.
China, nevertheless, kept its focus on the Teesta project and waited for the opportunity to come once again its way because the Project is at the core of its geostrategic vision in the region vis-à-vis India in an area where the two countries also share a very large border, a great deal of it disputed. The project will bring Chinese engineers and workers in large numbers too close to allow China to track India’s geopolitical plans and moves in the region. China, meanwhile, added new elements to its vision around the Teesta project.
In the platform provided by the Centre for Alternates, a new Dhaka think tank, ambassador Wen stated that China would build several smart cities on the bank of the Teesta while completing the Teesta project that would bring more Chinese engineers and workers to the critically strategic area for India. The ambassador also stated that China would invest hugely in newly established EPZs and was confident that all these projects and investments were done deals and woi;d start after January 7. These projects, in particular the Teesta project, have the potential to become nightmares for Indian strategic planners and thinkers.
Bangladesh-India and Bangladesh-China relations must have come full circle since 1971 if ambassador Wen had assessed these relations correctly. There is no reason, otherwise, for an Awami League-led regime to give the Teesta project with the smart cities to China based on the history of Awami League-India relations and the sort of influence that most people in Bangladesh think India has over the Awami League. Unless, of course, one focuses on the stranger-than-fiction mess that the AL regime has made of the January 7 general election to return to power for a fourth consecutive term and it needs the sort of help to deal with it that it believes only China can give.
M Serajul Islam is a former career ambassador.
The article appeared in the New Age.