‘Two Rajas (kings) rule our country; all of us are Projas (subject)’

– a commoner

THE political system of governance in Bangladesh is evolving by producing a ruling elite that consists of ‘democratic dynasties’. The present ruling elite comprises of two major and one minor political dynasty with their respective tribunes. Prior to independence in 1971, Bangladesh had neither a dynasty nor a ruling elite. Bangladesh was the outcome of a Bengali nationalist movement whose political leadership originated from the urban middle class with strong roots in the peasantry. The Bengali middle class opted for Bangladesh because they found non-Bengali Pakistanis a stumbling block in their aspiration to become the ruling elite in Pakistan.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of the nationalist movement, was ‘crowned’ as the Father of the Nation in post-colonial Bangladesh. He formed the first post-colonial government in 1972 with his political party, the Awami League, a middle class led party closely woven by kinship. The government was quick to nationalize the industry owned by Pakistanis and the Bengali economic elite, but simultaneously allowed the middle class to transform itself into a noveau riche with financial help and patronage of the state.¹ This noveau riche class laid the foundation for the making of dynasty in Bangladesh.

Three historical moments in Bangladesh politics created three democratic dynasties: the accession to power by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1972, the emergence of General Ziaur Rahman in 1977 and the assumption of power by General Ershad in 1982.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1972-1975) became the first prime minister to head a parliamentary form of government in 1972. But in 1975, he replaced the multi-party system with an authoritarian one-party system led by the BAKSAL (the Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League, created out of a merger between the Awami League and the Krishak Sramik Party). This prompted the military coup that claimed Sheikh Mujib’s life.

In 1977, General Ziaur Rahman (1977-1981) emerged as a military strongman, but after a brief interregnum he decided to return to democracy. Given the political culture of Bangladesh, Zia knew well that he had to work through political channels to legitimize military rule. He could not perpetually rely on the military and bureaucracy to mobilize the masses against the Awami League (AL), which had strong grassroots support and thus floated the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). As Zia opened space for political participation, Awami League leaders were quick to install Sheikh Hasina – daughter of Sheikh Mujib – as party chief. In 1981, Zia was killed in a military putsch, but BNP politicians made Zia’s wife Khaleda Zia the party chief.

 

Meanwhile, General H.M. Ershad assumed power in 1982 in a bloodless and peaceful military coup. He soon formed his Jatiya Party. Since then his kin, especially the relatives of the first lady, Raushan Ershad, have come to play a powerful role in politics. Raushan Ershad’s sister Momota Wahab has been a minister from time to time. The husband of one of her sisters was the chief of Bangladesh Overseas Employment. Her brother, Mohiuddin, a senior diplomat, is married to the daughter of the late left leader Moshiur Rahman, who worked as an influential minister in Zia’s cabinet. His son Shafiqul Haque Ghani Swapan also worked for a time as a minister in the Ershad regime.

General Ershad was forced out of power in 1990. Without state power, the Ershad dynasty has been struggling to survive and keep intact the leadership of the Jatiya Party in a situation in which Ershad has to balance the fight between his wife and brother. In 2009, Ershad’s brother, G.M. Quader, insisted on an election alliance with the Awami League. Ershad’s wife opposed this. She wanted the Jatiya Party to participate in the election on its own. Ershad decided to form an alliance in order to ensure access to the state. The Awami League and its alliance won the election and Ershad’s brother became a minister in Sheikh Hasina’s cabinet.

By 1990, a consensus had developed among the dynasties that the only way to legitimate change of government was through democratic elections. Since then, state power has alternated between AL and BNP: the BNP winning the 1990 elections, the Awami League the 1996 elections, the BNP returning to power in 2001, and the Awami League following in 2009. Their long spells in power indicate that while the Ershad dynasty is struggling, the Mujib and Zia dynasties are sufficiently consolidated to control the nitty-gritty of democratic politics. Indeed, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina are now grooming their sons, Tarique Zia and Sajeeb Wazed Joy, to succeed them, leading to two three-generational ruling dynasties in Bangladesh’s short history as an independent state: Zia-Khaleda-Tarique and Mujib-Hasina-Joy.²

 

The ruling dynasties are glued by family and kinship ties. Across the various South Asian countries, families have used political parties to enhance their personal standing and influence, and these parties in turn have relied more on kinship structures instead of binding ideologies and principle.³ The dominance of dynasties in a democratic system is influenced by two primordial factors. First, the descendants or family members enter politics at a crucial moment when political parties face crises, usually upon the sudden demise of a tribune. The absence of a designated political successor result in the formation of factions with the party. The party elites aspiring to leadership are invariably drawn into an internal factional fight, usually unable to elect a new party leader.

Consequently, the feuding actors’ natural choice falls upon the tribune’s immediate kin to provide an alternative viable candidate who can symbolically integrate the party and temporarily prevent it from falling apart. The kin of the deceased are required to mediate internal factionalism. They all fall into the category of leaders whose assumption of power is mediated by relatives, as opposed to those whose careers are shaped from the beginning by their own choice, attributes and efforts, and by a strong sense of their own political efficacy.⁴

 

Second, the political families create a context which routinizes the participation of family members in politics. Politicized from the outset within their family environment, these actors enter politics primarily because they have someone – either a father, mother, brother, friend, or uncle – in politics, irrespective of their ideological leanings. It is a system of preparing ones kin as a political successor that is endorsed by public support.⁵

Combined with the hierarchical and hereditary values of Bengali culture,⁶ these kin-based political parties are marked by a relative absence of inner-party democracy. They spawn despotic hierarchical behaviour instead of nurturing the democratic value of equality within political parties. The tribunes initially rely both on kin-based and non kin-based loyalists to control their parties, balancing power between the two. But over time, both sets of loyalists expand their support base and network with their own kin and kin-based politics spreads from the party leader to the leadership of other factions within the party as well.

Intra-party factions are generally comfortable about grooming their kin as successors, but feel threatened by the presence of others. This culture inhibits the rise of leaders without kinship ties, who are at a disadvantage in climbing the ladder of leadership within the party. In many cases, the non-kin actors and disgruntled rising leaders, at an appropriate time, play an instrumental role in overthrowing the tribunes and their regimes.⁷

 

Indeed, the prevalence of kinship is not only observed at the national level, but pervades even local level politics. In July 2010, for example, conflict broke out within the ruling Awami League party between the deputy leader of Parliament and the minister of labour. The deputy leader of Parliament is a non-kin loyalist of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. She was also a close aide of her father, Sheikh Mujib. But the son of the labour minister is married to the prime minister’s daughter. The aging deputy leader patronized and groomed her elder son, Shahadab Akbar, to take control of the Awami League in her constituency. The labour minister, who vehemently opposed such a move, mobilized his own kin to oppose Akbar. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the district administration had to be called in to mediate this local conflict between nationally known families.

 

Once it takes root in political parties, familial politics also spills over into the broader public sphere. The democratic public sphere is organized in both primordial and civic groupings. Primordial groups created by the concept of ‘desh’ are bound by moral principles and operate on the same imperatives as kinship. The civic structures associated with democracy – the civil bureaucracy, the judiciary, the election commission, and so on – in contrast, are not organized around the norms of family and kinship. Dynasty based politics thus encourages primordial politics and weakens civic institutions.

For example, when Sheikh Hasina became prime minster, she appointed as the chief justice of the Supreme Court a person from her home district, Faridpur. When Khaleda Zia was prime minister, civil-military bureaucrats from her district Noakhali became powerful. People understand such appointments as promotion of the prime minister’s desh. Bengalis understand desh as ‘country’, but culturally they also equate the notion of desh with ‘local country’, wherein primordial groups maintain separate boundaries. The local desh acquires a sociological reality distinct from the concrete extension of kinship and other social ties across space.⁸ Thus, adhering to the code of kinship relations in the public space is considered as justified or acceptable moral behaviour.

Competitive elections, in particular, do not always conform to the hierarchical values that drive dynastic politics. When political parties with hereditary leadership participate in competitive elections, these contestations can work as a countervailing pressure on the structure of dynasty. The countervailing pressures continuously form and develop numerous factions which the dynastic system has to delicately balance. Party members face a dilemma because they have to choose party leaders based on family ties, often at the expense of competent leaders who may have greater popular support or ability. The dynastic system of political governance is thus unable to create the needed space for non-kin leaders. This breeds conditions for inner-party conflict, factions, and sometimes open revolt.

 

When dynastic parties try to impose their hierarchical rules and one-party dictatorship over a multiparty democratic system, they tend to deny the democratic rights of the opposition tribunes and parties, and consequently generate political resistance. In response, the opposition tribunes mobilize their political parties, frequently call for hartals (political strikes) and often do not shy away from unleashing violence. As a result, the democratic system and the economy descends into chaos. Suffering from insecurity, people begin to look for an alternative leadership beyond tribunes and their parties. Historically, this has created an opportunity for the military to replace the ruling tribune.

For example, when Sheikh Mujib introduced a one party state, BAKSAL, by abolishing the parliamentary system, the military intervened. When the late President Ziaur Rahman manipulated the democratic system to establish his autocratic rule, a military putsch in 1981 resulted in his killing. In both coups, the military officers involved were close kin.⁹ In 1990, dynastic parties mobilized people against the Ershad regime and he was forced to resign. In 1996, BNP was coaxed to hold elections only to experience defeat. In 2001, the Awami League reluctantly participated in the election, but refused to accept the election result. In 2006, the country experienced serious violence as the BNP tried to manipulate the electoral system, a move which was opposed by the Awami League. The ensuing political confrontation destabilized the country and prompted a military backed ‘caretaker’ civilian government to intervene and remove political families from power on 11 January 2007. This event is popularly termed as ‘1/11 that destroyed the twin tower of two political families.’ However, each military coup and intervention has only resulted in further weakening rule-based democracy and strengthening the dynastic system.

 

The relationship between dynasty and state is a critical one. When a tribune assumes the responsibility of government, his/her network seeks to establish political supremacy over state institutions and public servants, so that the latter are forced to work at the behest of political extended families. They insist that public servants express their loyalty to kin and family of tribunes rather than to the people. This process has two serious implications for democracy and state institutions. First, ruling parties transform the core decision-making structure of government into a political club at the hub of state power in Parliament and the prime minister’s office. Those belonging to the political club/coterie end up alienating many dedicated party members whose contribution to party development is significant. Many become disenchanted as they do not have access to the political club, resulting in enhanced inner-party rift. This rebellious group questions the credibility of the dynasty, sometimes leaving the party, only to ensure that the opposition dynasty comes to power in the future election. Second, the dominance of political families and their loyalists has a negative impact on the development of achievement oriented democratic institutions.

 

The sustenance of dynasty depends on two institutions: the state and political parties. The tribunes are the head of political parties, but they control parties by transforming them into extended political families. The extended political family is critical in winning elections, which in turn gives political parties control of state resources. The access, manipulation and control over state power and spoils solidifies the economic foundations of political dynasty. In the absence of a strong market, the state is a key source of capital. Dynasties manipulate the state’s economic activities and largesse to fill their financial coffers. In the process of capital accumulation, both state institutions and industry become dysfunctional and sick, enabling the government to disinvest in favour of the private sector. The same political families then buy back sick state enterprises to generate further profits in the market. They thus gain in both ways. First, they accumulate capital by manipulating state institutions, and second, the accumulated capital is used to buy back sick industry.

This process, over the years, has contributed to the development of a crony capitalism, which requires the support of the political system for its protection and nurturance.¹⁰ In 2011, for example, according to a government investigation, the share market crashed because the manipulators swindled Taka 20,000 crore ($ 2739 m). However, the finance minister refused to publish the name of these manipulators as they are all connected to and protected by political parties.¹¹

The process of participation in elections and alternating control of state power by democratic dynasties brings a certain kind of equilibrium in the political system. Over the years, the practice of democracy has produced the following informal governance pattern: tribune-kinship-party-government-state-politicization. Many smaller parties aspire to be members of these extended political families by forming political alliances with them.

 

It may seem that the effort by political families to rely on old institutions and structures to define their new class realities and accumulate capital creates an enormous contradiction. In reality, the synthesis of traditional hierarchical culture and the modern forms of democracy has developed a consensus on governance. Legitimate governance depends on elections, which are held every five years to select a national leader from among the dynasties. People also alternate between dynasties despite the efforts of each ruling tribune to continue in power. Paradoxically, the enhanced political participation of a competitive electoral process produces democratic dynasties to govern the country.

 

Footnotes:

1. M. Mannan, ‘The State and the Formation of a Dependent Bourgeoisie in Bangladesh’, South Asia Journal 3(4), 1990.

2. M. Mannan, ‘All in the Families’, The Daily Star, 6 November 2006.

3. J. Jiggings, Caste and Family in the Politics of the Sinhalese 1947-1976. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, London, New York, 1976.

4. R. Jahan, ‘Women in South Asian Politics’, Third World Quarterly 9(3), 1987.

5. M. Mannan, ‘Bangla Democracy’, Forum 2(9), 2008.

6. M. Mannan, Enslaving Development: An Anthropological Enquiry Into the World of NGOs. PhD thesis. The Department of Social Anthropology, Durham University, UK, 2010. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/340/

7. M. Mannan, ‘An Anthropology of Power Structure: The Making of Tribunes and Dictators in Bangladesh’, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 16(2), 1993.

8. P. Bertocci, ‘Islam and the Social Construction of the Bangladesh Countryside’, in Rafiuddin Ahmed (ed), Understanding the Bengal Muslims: Interpretative Essays. University Press, Dhaka, 2001.

9. M. Mannan, Kinship Nexus and Class-Politics: The Case of the State in the Post-Colonial Bangladesh Society. Cand.Polit (M.Phil) Thesis, Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway, February 1990.

10. M. Mannan, 2008, op cit., fn. 5.

11. TDS. ‘Tk 20,000cr swindled. Stock crash probe also finds Tk 15cr siphoned off country, reveals deep collusion between regulators and market players.’ The Daily Star, 8 April 2011.