State of liberal democracy worsening

The state of liberal democracy in the country has worsened significantly over the last 10 years.

With its score 0.1 (on a scale of 0-1), Bangladesh stood 154th  among 179 countries in Liberal Democracy Index (LDI), according to the Democracy Report-2021 of Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute.

Denmark secured first place in the index with the score of 0.88. 

The fifth annual democracy report by Sweden's V-Dem Institute, titled "Autocratisation goes viral", has categorised Bangladesh's current regime as an "electoral autocracy".

"The data also shows that populous, influential states such as Bangladesh, Hungary, Philippines, and Tanzania belong to this group of autocratisers, as does Hong Kong," reads the report.

Some of these are large, influential countries found across the major regions in the world, making it a truly global trend.

"Notably, the majority of countries with such substantial and significant declines on theLDI, no less than 15, are electoral autocracies where rights and freedoms are deteriorating," it says.

The report which compared status of democracy between 2010 and 2020 describes Bangladesh as an "Autocratising country".

Autocratisation typically follows a similar pattern across very different contexts. Ruling governments first attack the media and civil society, and polarise societies by disrespecting opponents and spreading false information, then undermine elections, says V-Dem Institute.

The global decline during the past 10 years is steep and continues in 2020, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

Bangladesh stood fourth among its neighbours -- India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka -- in terms of autocratisation.

India, which represents the world's largest democracy has turned into an "electoral autocracy" country and stood first among its neighbours, finds the report.

It says that the threat to freedom of expression and media intensifies. The condition is substantially declined in 32 countries, compared to only 19 just three years ago.

Saying that repression on the civil society is intensifying, the V-Dem data registered substantial deterioration in 50 countries over the past 10 years.

The opposition political party has also termed the country an autocratic one.

On Thursday, Jatiya Party Chairman and Deputy Leader of the opposition GM Quader said Bangladesh cannot be called a democratic state due to "autocracy" and lack of good governance.

"The imbalance of power has given birth to corruption and misrule in the country," he said while welcoming around 50 leaders and activists of different parties who joined the party at a programme at the JP chief's Banani office.

V-Dem's report is based on a dataset on democracy with almost 30 million data points for 202 countries from 1789 to 2020. Involving over 3,500 scholars and other country experts, V-Dem measures hundreds of different attributes of democracy.