Bangladesh pushes ‘groundbreaking’ reforms after Hasina exit

DHAKA — Bangladesh’s caretaker government is launching a “groundbreaking” overhaul of its electoral system, judiciary and other key institutions in a major reform push after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted in a student-led uprising.

The plan unveiled late Wednesday by Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize-winning head of the caretaker government, was embraced in some quarters, just over a month after Hasina fled in the face of social unrest and protests that left more than 600 dead and thousands more injured.

But others warned over the scale of the unprecedented task for the South Asian nation, given that Hasina’s administration had become synonymous with corruption and rights abuses.

“Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule has severely damaged the police bureaucracy, judiciary, and other institutions,” said Sadia Rahman who works for a nongovernmental organization. “Real change is impossible without reforming these areas and removing the remnants of Hasina’s authoritarian regime.”

Yunus, whose pioneering work in microloans won him international acclaim, said the interim government would create six reform commissions tasked with recommending changes to the constitution, electoral system, judiciary, police, anti-corruption commission and public administration.

In a televised address to the country of 171 million, Yunus said leaders of the new commissions were picked from a diverse crop of civil society activists, former judges, anti-corruption experts and prominent lawyers.

The new agencies are set to begin their work from the start of October and must deliver reform proposals within three months, Yunus added, as the interim government moves to hold fresh elections.

Once the commission reports are released, the government will consult with major political parties to finalize the reform framework.

Badiul Alam Majumdar, secretary of civil rights group Shujan (Citizens for Good Governance) and head of the new electoral reform commission, told Nikkei Asia that his work ahead would be tough because Hasina’s ruling Awami League had undermined trust in the electoral process.

People throw eggs at former Bangladesh Law Minister Anisul Huq at a Dhaka court on Aug. 15 after he was arrested in connection with a shopkeeper’s killing.   © Reuters

Hasina, who has taken refuge in neighboring India while some of her key ministers have been arrested, won a fourth consecutive term in January after a vote boycotted by the opposition and slammed by some Western governments as rigged.

“There haven’t been genuine elections for the past decade and a half; what took place were selections made by the ruling regime in various forms, eroding public trust in the electoral process,” Majumdar said. “Restoring that trust will require monumental efforts.”

Iftekharuzzaman, executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), said his goal as the new chief of the anti-corruption reform commission is to take on the country’s eye-watering levels of graft.

Bangladesh ranked a lowly 149 out of 180 nations on Transparency International’s 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index. The office of the chief adviser in the country’s interim government estimates that nearly $100 billion was smuggled out of the country during Hasina’s rule.

“We will certainly focus on corruption within the police, judiciary, and bureaucracy,” he said. “These areas are deeply affected by corruption and we need to identify effective strategies to address it.”

Overhauling public administration would be another Herculean task after the previous government reduced it to a clan-based patronage system, said another observer.

“They largely prioritized party loyalty over merit in their recruitments, which has diminished the functionality and credibility of the bureaucracy,” added Salahuddin M. Aminuzzaman, a professor at the South Asian Institute of Policy and Governance at North South University in Bangladesh. “A major overhaul of this sector is essential to realign the country and set it back on the right path.”

Political analyst Zahed Ur Rahman described the unprecedented overhaul as “groundbreaking” in its promise to not only implement reforms, but also to consult with relevant stakeholders and parties across the political spectrum.

“This shows that Yunus genuinely wants to ensure that the people’s will is represented,” Rahman said.

But he expressed concern about moving ahead on constitutional reforms, saying such sensitive changes could be better handled by an elected government rather than an unelected interim administration.

Still, the main opposition party has already embraced moves to reform major institutions, said Zahir Uddin Swapan, adviser to Bangladesh Nationalist Party acting chairperson Tarique Rahman.

“In fact, BNP has long advocated for significant reforms and has already published proposals addressing these six institutions,” Swapan told Nikkei.

source : asia.nikkei