Reaction to Tarique Rahman's Elevation in BNP

There has been a fairly energetic mixed reaction on Tarique Rahman’s elevation to second in command, within the BNP, next only to his mother, leader of the BNP and former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia.  On the one hand within the BNP, senior party members claim that his name did not come up in discussions on leadership.  On the other hand, mid-level party leaders have pegged their fortunes on Tarique’s rising fortune.  As the Daily Star reports:

“Several senior leaders have expressed resentment as they believe the move came from those drawing on Tarique’s attention and favour to win for themselves better positions in future committees.”

“Mid-level and junior leaders however are excited about the decision over Tarique, elder son of BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia.”

“Speaking in return for anonymity, a senior leader told The Daily Star, “Tarique holds the future of BNP, and there’s no alternative to him. But we could have elected him through a collective process and the standing committee could bring the proposal formally.”

“He said some mid-level leaders exercised spin control on the situation just to be in favour with Tarique. But now the party is facing criticism that the council was all about electing Tarique Rahman. ”

The real burden of Tarique’s elevation is the one that is being discussed country-wide: the anti-democratic impulse in Bangladesh has once again come to the fore.

This is not a move that is simply non-democratic, or a-democratic, having nothing at all to do with formal democracy.  Partisans will claim, for instance, that this is an intra-party political issue; some leaders are upset because this move sidelines the careers of many senior party activists.  I think the issue is more troubling than some intra-politcal infight.

Tarique’s elevation to power is essentially a condemnation of deeply held egalitarian democratic principles that asserts that leaders are citizen candidates.  This may be the Periclean ideal of committed citizens who stand for positions of disinterested leadership.  There is no reason to think that Bangladeshis who invoke democratic leadership do not implicitly endorse such a model.  Contrast that with an model of democratic leadership that supposes that leaders should be selected from a cadre of talented individuals who should have greater claim to positions of leadership.  This claim will tend to be co-extensive with the opportunities of leadership.  Suppose this the Madisonian model of Republican leadership.  Furthermore suppose that there exists a third model of democratic leadership: leaders lead the populace toward a policy that reflects the general will, and whereby citizens are required to align their preference ordering to reflect that of the state.  Label this the Rousseauvian model of democratic leadership.

It is clear that the Periclean model could have worked only for Athens, and even then only at a particular point in its own history.  To wit, Alcibiades, Pericles’ successor  led Athens to ruin, and then defected to a leadership position in the Persian Empire.

The Madison model is one that embodies leadership as a sociological fact in the United States and much of the developed world.  The leaders of most Western countries–and increasingly many Eastern countries–are typically individuals who stand for leadership after first occupying roles in the highest echelons of the socio-political economy of the relevant nation-states.  We generally think nothing at all of this overt display of oligarchy in action.  This is because in most cases, the leadership of a certain educated class is more enlightened that the leadership that might engage our political economy if leadership were determined by lot.  (Though as Bernard Manin has written in his wonderful book, Principles of Representative Democracy, the difference in leadership by election or lot is one of degree, not of kind)

It is fairly obvious that leadership in Bangladesh is not determined by the standing of a enlightened leader, who is typically more educated in politics, economics, finance and sociology than the typical voter.  Indeed, politics in Bangladesh is a deeply non-disinterested local affair, where leadership is arranged according to to subdistrict level representation.  This move creates deep alignment of the interests of the local representatives to those of the local village bound voters. Moreover given that parliament in Bangladesh is unicameral, it is not generally possible to propose non-myopic, cross-cutting policies that might speak to a national consensus, the type of view adopted by disinterested leadership.

There is no sense in which leadership in Bangladesh  can be supposed enlightened (by that, we typically mean disinterested leadership directed toward some immediately unavailable higher principle).  Indeed, Tarique Rahman’s election to leadership is just the master-stroke that illustrates that leadership in Bangladesh is entirely a family affair and one in which the citizen candidate has no place.  For instance, note Grameen Bank founder, and Nobel Laureate Muhammed Yunus decision to not stand for office.  The people of Bangladesh, perhaps, still cling to a Periclean ideal, no matter how inconsistent such a model might be to the local facts on the ground.

Bangladesh is now, more than ever, the lived political contest between two opposing families; a political contest writ large on the lives of millions of innocent bystanders.