by Helal Uddin Ahmed 28 December 2020
Adolf Hitler’s notorious publicity chief Goebbels’ principal technique was to repeat falsehoods over and over again, which ultimately gave them credibility in the public eye. That tyrannical ploy seems to be the order of the day now in Bangladesh politics. We do not have to go very far to prove this point. A chronological review of the caretaker government movement spearheaded by the Awami League (now ruling party) during 1994-96 would be sufficient for the purpose. This review exercise is also quite relevant in view of the blatantly one-sided, hugely controversial, and massively irregular Eleventh Parliamentary (Jatiya Sangsad or JS) Elections of Bangladesh held on 30 December 2018, which once again corroborated the justification for the now-disbanded caretaker system.
1990 saw the ouster of the autocratic Ershad regime in Bangladesh and transfer of Presidency to the then chief justice as per the caretaker formula of the three major political alliances. The formula was permissible under the constitution. Therefore, Ershad did not violate the constitution when he handed over power to Vice President Shahabuddin Ahmed, who ultimately became the acting president and head of the caretaker regime.
But after BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) came to power in 1991 through a popular verdict, the opposition Awami League opposed the holding of the direct presidential election that became due, and instead insisted on a parliamentary form of government. Later, as per the agreement of all political parties represented in parliament, the 12th amendment of the constitution was passed, facilitating a return to parliamentary democracy. The 11th constitutional amendment was, however, not a pre-requisite for this parliamentary transition; rather it was passed only to make it possible for Acting President Shahabuddin Ahmed to return to his earlier position of Chief Justice. But interestingly, a proposal by the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami at that time to incorporate the provision of a neutral caretaker government during national elections was rejected outright by the Awami League (AL).
The Awami League-backed ‘Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee’ (Committee for the elimination of killers and collaborators of 1971) went into action early in 1992 with the goal of “upholding the spirit of the war of liberation and eliminating the killers and collaborators of 1971”. As the streets heated up, the Jamaat chief Golam Azam was taken into custody. In the parliament, the Awami League demanded a ban on religion-based politics of Jamaat and trial of “War criminal Golam Azam”. But their ‘no confidence’ motion against the government was defeated in JS. In retrospect, it seemed obvious that the AL was trying to punish Jamaat for toeing the line of BNP during the formation of the government. Ultimately, Jamaat was apparently bullied into submission and virtually coerced into supporting the line of Awami League on the caretaker issue.
The year 1993 also saw the same trend of AL-led anti-Jamaat agitation. At the end of the year, however, the Jamaat chief was released from jail as per the directive of the Supreme Court.
1994 signaled a shift in policy for both the Awami League and the Jamaat-e-Islami. AL started to display a more pro-Islamic approach. The Jamaat, now fearful of AL, adopted an anti-BNP posture. Then in early March, the AL-led opposition – which surprisingly included Jamaat for the first time, walked out of parliament after taking exception to a comment made by the then Information Minister Nazmul Huda. The comment was a trifling one, but the stalemate continued even after Huda apologised as per the demand of the opposition.
The next significant event was the controversial Magura by-election. The BNP candidate won unexpectedly, which could be mainly attributed to local Upazila politics. But the pro-AL media created an uproar and blew it out of proportion, one Dhaka-based weekly even going as far as conducting a survey in Dhaka (instead of Magura) to prove that the election was rigged. The Election Commission, as well as many observers, held the view that the election was more or less free and fair, similar to other polls held under the then BNP regime, including Dhaka City Corporation election won by the AL-backed mayoral candidate Mohammad Hanif, the Chittagong City Corporation polls won by AL’s Mohiuddin Chowdhury and the Sylhet City Corporation elections won by the Awami League’s Badruddin Ahmed Kamran. But AL-led opposition, which included Ershad’s Jatiya Party and Jamaat-e-Islami, became furious and demanded a fresh election in Magura after the cancellation of the results. This demand was added to their list of preconditions for a return to parliament.
Later, side by side with their continuous boycott of parliament, the opposition placed a new demand – the passage of a bill in parliament for a neutral caretaker government for holding national elections. They added to the intimidation by demanding that the ruling party itself should bring the bill in the House.
As the stalemate continued, the opposition intensified their agitation on the streets. Then they announced an outline for a caretaker government which the ruling party “must accept”, the gist of which was, “the parties on the streets will determine the structure of the caretaker government”. The demand implied an elected parliament was redundant in a democratic set-up and it was the MPs on the streets rather than those in the house who were supposed to decide the course of democracy. The demand was not conciliatory; neither was it feasible or serious.
After the expiry of a number of deadlines, the opposition set 28 December 1994 as the cut-off date for the government to accept their demands; otherwise, they threatened to resign en-masse from the Jatiya Sangsad. In the meantime, the absence of opposition MPs from parliament on the ground of demand for a caretaker government was declared illegal and unconstitutional by the High Court Division of the Supreme Court. The mediation efforts by the Commonwealth Secretary-General and his envoy Sir Ninian Stephen (ex-Governor General of Australia) also failed to bear fruit.
28 December 1994 saw the unfolding of a drama in the parliament house. Just when a deal seemed to have been struck, the opposition refused to sign a written undertaking of peace and instead handed over their resignation letters to the Speaker.
The first week of 1995 saw Prime Minister Khaleda Zia offering to resign 30 days ahead of the scheduled election so that the President could hold an election in a caretaker capacity, provided the opposition returned to parliament and ratified the proposal. At that time, the AL leadership also appeared to accept the idea in public meetings. After some weeks and a few more strikes and blockades, the Speaker announced that the resignation letters of opposition MPs could not be accepted due to some technical flaws. The Opposition MPs were thus provided with an opportunity to return to parliament and ratify the agreed formula. But surprisingly, they stuck to their guns and did not return. The matter was finally settled in August 1995, when as per the advice of the Supreme Court, the seats of 145 opposition MPs were declared vacant as a consequence of their continuous absence from parliament.
The final twist in the caretaker campaign was the intensification of street agitation and strikes by the AL-led opposition asking the BNP government to accept their formula of elections under a caretaker regime with the Chief Justice as the Caretaker Prime Minister. But the reality was that, whereas the caretaker administration of Chief Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed was ultimately a constitutionally valid entity, it could not have been so at that juncture under the constitution of the day in the parliamentary system.
The BNP government was in a fix. They could not accept AL’s unconstitutional demand as the people had not given them the mandate to violate the constitution even with the scope for post-facto ratification. So when the BNP government did not concede to the AL-led opposition’s demands, they threatened more and more strikes, resulting in a devastated economy and the creation of an anarchic situation throughout the country.
As the Nirmul Committee was waiting in the wings to pounce on the Ghatak-Dalals (killers-collaborators) as soon as the Jamaatis made a friendly gesture towards BNP, the latter were virtually coerced into toeing the line of Awami League. The Jatiya Party also continued to clutch on to the Awami straw as the downfall of the BNP government was the only hope for their salvation.
As for the AL leadership, anything would suit them as long as arch-enemy BNP was brought down in disgrace. They hoped to regroup then as during the Ershad regime and restart the process of persecution and destruction of BNP. AL claims of a movement for establishing the voting rights and right of food of the common people were at best hypocrisy and at worst complete lies. Rights of food and vote could only be ensured by creating a congenial atmosphere for unhindered socio-economic growth, not by resorting to 32-hour, 72-hour, 96-hour, 144-hour, and finally indefinite strikes.
According to one estimate, the AL-led alliance had called over 170 strikes in the country within a span of just two years during 1994-96. Despite innumerable provocative acts like human-chains and sieges on a continual basis, the BNP government displayed utmost patience and exemplary democratic tolerance by not taking recourse to repressive measures against the opposition leaders and workers or the free press. It may sound astonishing, but not a single prominent AL leader was arrested during the whole episode of the caretaker movement.
But the AL was as resolute as ever in rejecting the offers of dialogue and compromise with the BNP side. It continuously referred to the acceptance of its unconstitutional demands as a precondition for any talks. The fingers of the democracy-loving people of Bangladesh remained crossed as they pondered the next move of the opposition. Doubts pricked the public mind because it was the AL who had accused the previous caretaker administration of Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed of subtle rigging! What next? What was the opposition alliance up to? What did they really want? Free and fair elections? Or an unconstitutional government? Democracy? Or, military rule?
It was in this backdrop of destructive politics of the opposition political parties that the then BNP government was forced to hold the parliamentary polls of 15 February 1996. This was explicitly done to maintain constitutional continuity – despite threats, intimidation, and boycott by the major opposition parties. The opposition not only boycotted the polls, but they also unleashed a reign of terror and violence seldom seen previously during elections in this part of the world.
Then, after the 6th parliament was convened in mid-March 1996, the BNP government wasted no time in passing the constitutional amendment bill providing for the non-party caretaker government during elections. The Leader of the House Khaleda Zia declared in unequivocal terms that the 6th parliament as a means to an end, so that constitutional validity could be provided for holding a fully participatory election under a non-party caretaker regime within the shortest possible time. After meeting its constitutional obligation, the 6th parliament was dissolved on 30 March, and power was handed over to the caretaker regime headed by retired Chief Justice Habibur Rahman in order to hold the parliamentary polls in June 1996.
Therefore, despite the opposition ploys and violence, the then BNP regime succeeded in fully meeting its constitutional obligations and saved the country and its socio-economy from a civil war-like anarchic situation by incorporating the provision for a caretaker government. On the other hand, the Jamaat-e-Islami was rewarded for its supportive role during the caretaker movement, as the subsequent AL-led regime (1996-2001) did not initiate any move to hold the trial of killers and collaborators of 1971, which would have implicated many top Jamaat leaders.
But ironically, following the holding of free and fair elections by successive caretaker regimes in 1996, 2001, and 2008, the political observers were quite astonished when the Awami League government itself chose to annul the caretaker system (CTG) in 2011. It was done in spite of the fact that even its parliamentary committee formed for the purpose of reviewing it supported a continuation of the system in an amended form. The shorter version of the verdict on annulling the CTG system in the Bangladesh Constitution was delivered by the appellate division of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice ABM Khairul Haque on 10 May 2011. It, however, recommended the continuation of the system for another two elections. But the longer version was submitted around one and a half years later with marked differences in content, quite unprecedented in the history of Bangladesh.
The most notable feature of the trial was that seven out of eight Amici Curiae were in favour of the CTG’s continuation. Of them, Dr. Kamal Hossain, Advocates TH Khan, Mahmudul Islam, M Amirul Islam, and Rokanuddin Mahmud lent clear-cut support to the caretaker system; but Barrister Rafiqul Huq and M Zahir suggested revisions or amendments of the system. Even Attorney General Mahbubey Alam had supported it and predicted that chaos and unrest would erupt in the country if the next two parliamentary elections were not held under a caretaker government (The Daily Star, 11 May 2011). Only Ajmalul Hossain QC, who was the last among the amici curiae to place arguments, took a stand against the CTG system. The latter’s arguments were used in the final verdict in overturning the High Court decision that had earlier upheld the CTG system.
The need for a caretaker government for overseeing the JS elections in Bangladesh was again felt very acutely during the patently one-sided parliamentary elections held on 5 January 2014 and 30 December 2018. Although there were hardly any foreign polls observers due to the cleverly set timing of those elections, the people of this country know very well what happened at those junctures and how the incumbents managed to return to power amid allegations of massive manipulations, vote-rigging, and visibly partisan roles played by the successive Election Commissions.
According to a survey conducted by the Bangladesh Chapter of Transparency International on the 30 December 2018 election, the administration and law enforcing agencies played a silent role in 91 percent of the constituencies; there was fake voting in 89 percent seats; sealing of ballot papers on the night before the election took place in 72 percent seats; casting false votes by occupying booths happened in 65 percent seats; polling agents of opposition parties were not allowed to enter polling centers in 63 percent constituencies; voters were prevented from going to centers in 57 percent seats, and voters were forced to vote for particular symbols in 57 percent of the constituencies. Sadly, democracy cannot have any real meaning if the will of the people cannot find expression through the electoral process, and hanging on to power by any means becomes the norm for survival in the political arena of the day.