Let me begin my
overview of the media elite in Bangladesh with an autobiographical account. After
the democratic transition of 1990, I did some research and the output was an
essay called “Democracy: The Historical Accident”. I submitted the piece to the
highbrow English weekly, Holiday. The editor changed the title, saying it was
“too loud”.
Then I wrote an
article on the emergency of 1958 in Ceylon, which I called “The Devil And The
Deep”. The editor of the most widely circulated English daily, The Daily Star, Mahfuz Anam, objected to the title. “The devil of democracy!” he gasped. “People
want democracy now.” The title was changed.
After a series of
violent hartals and murders, I concluded another article with the one-sentence
paragraph ‘We can have either democracy or safety, but not both’. The article
appeared in the Daily Star, but with the last paragraph expunged, and the
editor’s own words in its place, pleading for democracy.
My final and last
encounter with the Daily Star occurred when an editor, Modon Shahu, told me “We
know people want martial law, but we can’t print that”. If a newspaper knows
what the people want, but won’t say it, that’s self-censorship. (Strangely
enough, the motto of the Daily Star, blazoned across its online articles and
print issues, is ‘Committed to PEOPLE’S RIGHT TO KNOW).
But these are
mere peccadilloes compared to what the newspapers in Bangladesh got up to in
order to connive at fake elections.
A little
background first. As the reader will recall, General Ershad (always ‘General’)
resigned the presidency on December 6, 1990. Illegally, he was kept in jail
along with the vice president, Moudud Ahmed, who, by the constitution, was
supposed to assume the presidency on the incumbent’s resignation. Instead, the
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, violated the constitution of which he was
chief protector, became president, without a murmur of protest from the
national as well as international community.
The first ‘free
and fair’ elections were held in 1991, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party
(BNP) won, with Khaleda Zia as leader. The Awami League led by Sheikh Hasina
was now the opposition.
At the end of her
tenure, Khaleda Zia refused to budge and only a series of hartals, blockades and
sieges by the Awami League succeeded in removing her from office. A Solomonic
arrangement was arrived at: a neutral, caretaker government would henceforth
oversee all elections, and not the ruling party, which would step down. (The advisor
to the caretaker government would be the previous retired Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court – what this would mean for the independence of the judiciary can
be guessed at.)
Elections under
the neutral, caretaker government were held in 1996 and 2001, with the parties
rotating in power. The democratic miracle had been achieved – a two-party
system, with opposition and ruling party changing place every five years.
After the
election in 2001, a government officer told me confidentially that the election
had been bogus. I didn’t believe him.
Then, I read an
article in The
Economist and felt like a fool for disbelieving such a reliable
source. Now, our newspapers always report and even republish news items on
Bangladesh published in prestigious western journals like the New York Times,
the Washington Post, the Guardian, and, of course, the Economist.
Not a single word
appeared in the newspapers of Bangladesh about the findings of Walter Mebane
and his team at Cornell reported in the Economist. Mebane and others studied
the figures for the three elections in this country in 1991, 1996 and 2001. The
first was clean, the second showed that some 2% of results were problematic and
the third, a glaring 9%. Yet the elections had been vetted by the Carter Center
and the European Union.
The caretaker
government had been a ploy to provide the illusion of an alternation of power.
Its latent function – as opposed to
its manifest function of overseeing
true elections - was to ensure Buggins’ turn. Local as well as international
actors connived at the chimera. (The caretaker government was ditched after the
2008 election held under a military government. Since then, Bangladesh has been
a one-party state.)
The sentiments of
the elite were echoed by writer Tahmima Anam,
daughter of Mahfuz Anam, when she wrote for the BBC: “For three consecutive
elections, we have had a large and enthusiastic electorate who have ushered in
freely elected governments and representative parliaments. Although young and
sometimes faltering, we have been understandably proud of our fledgling
democracy.” Apparently, we, the people
of Bangladesh, are brains in vats being fed our stimuli by
malevolent/benevolent forces.
