A REPORT in a local daily mentioned that the United States has renewed calls for Bangladesh’s leaders to work through their bitter divisions, warning that prolonged instability would take a dangerous toll on the impoverished country. “We believe that all of the gains that Bangladesh has made in its economy, in its development trajectory, that all of those gains are fragile and unsustainable in the long term if it does not have political stability,” said Nisha Desai Biswal, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian Affairs. “And political stability is not possible without some greater degree of political inclusion,” she said in her testimony on “Assessing US Foreign Assistance Priorities in South Asia” before a congressional subcommittee on Wednesday, as per the report.
Any democracy has to have certain mechanisms to ensure that the pathway to power has checks and balances. These mechanisms are usually the holding of elections by neutral bodies who are autonomous organizations which cannot be influenced directly by the government who were in power before the election such as the Election Commission (EC). Instability in any democratic system of governance usually arises when these mechanisms are either not functioning or are sufficiently weak for them to be susceptible to external forces – usually the government in power at that time.
In situations like that described above a certain instability in the political culture of the nation sets in as the parties find it difficult to trust the institutions which are responsible for maintaining and sustaining the democratic structure. The government did not trust the Election Commission to allow election to be held under a neutral caretaker government. This is indeed what has precisely happened with the holding of the elections in January of this year. The election was conspicuously held by excluding the main opposition. The government was formed with other parties by distribution of parliamentary seats and ministries. Thus, we have government with no democratic legitimacy and no democratic checks and balances on the basis of no election. Organised crimes have to follow to justify the government lacking legitimacy.
