Reflections on Intra-Party Democracy in Bangladesh

One year ago, to the day, the Awami League swept back into power with an overwhelming majority of votes and corresponding seats in Parliament.  Promising change and prosperity in Bangladesh, Awami League leader and former Prime Minister Begum Sheikh Hasina Wajed trounced her opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by Begum Khaleda Zia, the widow of a former President and herself, a former prime minister.  There is a grand narrative here, one that requires some explication. For today, then, allow me to discuss the issue of intra-party democracy and its consequences for politics in Bangladesh.

The two opposition parties have promised greater transparency to voters and to their own stake holders. On the docket the plaintiff stands, the transparent democrat, pleading for greater openness in political control of the party and its associated political machine.  So far, her supplication has gone unheeded.

Competitive electoral democracy may well have returned to Bangladesh–though it is too early to make such declarations with commonplace confidence– after democracy itself was subverted, first through political giveaways and coalitional corruption and then through a short-lived military dictatorship.   Nevertheless, the quality of that democracy is, qualitatively retrograde.   Though there is far too much private corruption in government; the heart sinks and the mind swims when one thinks that the problem of democratic transparency is much more intractable when viewed from within:  intra-party political corruption may well outstrip whatever might pass for competitive public corruption in Bangladeshi politics.

Why might we plump for intra-party democracy when exercise of electoral democracy remained for most a distant and for much too long an unreachable, impracticable goal?  Because we might think that by democratizing candidate selection any incumbent government might impel, incentivize, the selection of qualifiably superior candidates than the ones who now stand for office in Bangladesh.  We might suppose that if entry were open to candidates of all stripes, though a price for entry were required–assume for now, some kind of primary or public signal– then only those candidates capable of paying the fee might enter political competition.  There is every reason to think this might be a welfare increasing move.  Having achieved a measure of public spiritedness in party candidate selection, we might then try to tinker and incentivize candidate self-selection on public spirited grounds.  

Though incentivizing candidate selection of superior candidates is the ultimate goal at hand, we might nevertheless suppose that an unrealistic goal unless we can begin to mechanically choose good candidates no matter why they stand for office.   This is the move that has so far been undercut by the reign of the two Begums.  As long as they remain in power, no one but family members and political clients will stand for office.  Indeed, in the vast majority of the cases, candidates for office and executive portfolios have been hand-picked by the Begums and, therefore, there is no such thing as democratic candidate selection in Bangladesh.  Politics in Bangladesh remains a badly managed family affair.  

Democratize the candidate selection process, so the theory runs and perhaps one or two candidates will stand for office, and will offer realizable policy, and will have the political capacity of build coalitions, and will govern from the center and might remain disinterested in so far as governing from the center might entail disinterestedness.  Such a theory might run along with coalition building to capture larger majorities.  The story goes something like this: recruit a candidate who demonstrates superior quality but has political preferences at some distance from the median party member.  Then, as long as he is able to maintain his own goals while supporting the party’s goals, then there exists some probability of a party capturing votes that might otherwise have gone to a competitor party.  If a party thinks this a feasible strategy then it would be rational for that party to democratize candidate selection.  If on the other hand a party identifies tout court with one individual, as is the case in Bangladesh where one party identifies entirely with the family of Sheikh Mujib or Ziaur Rahman, then no matter the consequences of democratizing candidate selection, candidate selection will remain a clientelistic exchange because it will be assumed that the party’s future lies with whomever is chosen by the party leader because, in the final analysis, the party IS the leader and her political preferences.

So it is no surprise that while the Caretaker Government (CTG) was in power it tried in vain to oust the two Begums from intra-party power and sought that each would seek self-exile over indictment.  The uproar that followed forced the CTG to back down and the two Begums were welcomed back to Dhaka to contest the 2008 election.  And, as before, it is no surprise then that as soon as the two parties re-constituted their positions as opposition parties in and out of parliament, each sought its own advantage by selecting to executive positions cronies and blood relatives.

This implies that the Begums think politics in Bangladesh their respective personal fiefdoms.  This is perhaps the most damning condemnation of Bangladeshi politics: democracy may have returned, but it remains a personal plaything, a puppet controlled by two strong-willed women who would attempt any ploy to see the other humiliated, defeated, run out of town.