THE student-led July mass uprising for a democratic political and economic order, which culminated in the ouster of the brutally authoritarian regime of Sheikh Hasina from power, forcing her to flee the country and take refuge in India, the hegemonic neighbour that patronised Hasina to cling to power without proper people’s mandate for years, has installed an ‘interim government’, led by globally known Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, to fix the distorted order — if not fully democratise the state.
If a jingoistic nationalist political ideology, absolute centralisation of power, creation of a cult around the top leader of the political party, crushing of the opposing views, elimination of political opponents, et cetera, are the characteristics of fascism, as the political scientists say, Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League are unmistakably fascist political existence. The leaders of the Anti-discrimination Movement, which has deposed Hasina from power, now say that overthrowing Hasina’s fascist regime is not enough; what is essential is to uproot the political and economic sources of fascism forever so that a genuinely democratic political, economic and judicial order can take root in society. For that to happen, the country’s political, constitutional and judicial systems have to undergo massive democratic changes that would require, in the first place, rewriting of the state’s constitution by a democratically elected constituent assembly. The existing constitution of the state, which allows an elected leader of Parliament to exercise enormous power without democratic accountability, after all, ‘legally’ creates elected tyrants.Ìý
There have, of course, been talks in society for quite some time now about democratising the state by way of rewiring the constitution by an elected constituent assembly and thus creating a ‘second republic’ — obviously in persuasion of the egalitarian spirit of the country’s liberation war — on the debris of the already failed first one. Nevertheless, the July uprising has succeeded in deposing the fascist government, while the authoritarian state that the deposed Hasina’s government used to carry out its fascist political, ideological and economic programmes still remains intact. One cannot have the debris of the old state to create a new one over without the old being dismantled.
Meanwhile, the ‘interim government’ of Professor Yunus, which looks like a body of the country’s apolitical urban elite, some of the members of which are even anti-political, is hardly expected to properly understand the egalitarian spirit and democratic aspirations of the student-mass uprising. Many a member of the elite body, after all, stayed in the comfort zone of life, without ever contesting the League’s 15 years of authoritarian rule, let alone facing its wraths, while some of them ensured a place in the interim body by dint of, say, 10 minutes of dramatic performance in the streets at the fag end of the painfully long, blood-soaked movement. They, therefore, are not expected to adhere to the uprising leaders’ radical democratic ideas. Instead, the incumbents would try to stick to the ideas of political reforms that have already been generated in the mainstream political camps over the past decade or so. Hence, one cannot rule out a political face-off between the two sides in the near future. Better, the interim government immediately launches a meaningful process of dialogue with all the stakeholders, political and otherwise, to reach a new level of consensus on the agenda of democratic changes. The sooner, the better. An ‘interim’ administration, after all, cannot have an open-ended tenure to take steps to democratise an authoritarian political order.Ìý
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Nurul Kabir is editor of ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ·.