All about fair and unfair elections
The quality of the upcoming general election is at the centre of national and international attention. And rightly so, because Bangladesh's democratic and sustainable development future hinges on it to a great extent. Democratic backsliding through the widely questioned 2014 and 2018 elections and the comprehensive hollowing out of accountability structures and processes across all aspects of governance over the past decade have elevated the upcoming election beyond a routine political event. It rather looms as a do-or-die existential window to restore political and institutional accountability at all levels of the state and political life.
The quality of the election is also critical for the health of the economy and the prospects of an inclusive economic future. Economic managers empowered by political masters over the past decade have transformed economic policymaking into a corrupt playbook to benefit narrow oligarchic interests at the cost of fostering a competitive economy and inclusive growth. The gathering economic crisis is obvious to laymen and experts alike, but key managers of the economy continue to be in denial. The election is critical from this angle too, to bring economic management face-to-face with ground realities and prioritise a comprehensive course correction.
What makes an election fair? Ruling party spokespersons appear to suggest that their "assurances" should suffice to put the matter at rest. However, there is universal scepticism about relying only on such assurances. But rather than dwelling on definitional debates on what constitutes "fairness," a more meaningful political discussion is about how elections become "unfair." One does not need to go far to find the answers to this question. Bangladesh's electoral experience over the preceding decade provides enough "lessons" on how elections can become unfair.
There are four areas of lesson-learning. The first is in the nature of the pre-election environment. The key instrument of "unfairness" in the pre-election phase is the suppression of political competition. The use of criminal judicial proceedings—cases, arrests, etc—is a common playbook in this regard. But what distinguishes the last decade in Bangladesh is the complete weaponisation of this instrument. The principal political challenger to the ruling party has had to remain politically active under a Himalayan weight of nearly half a million cases. New popular terminology has sprung up to capture this strategy by the ruling party of weaponising criminal legal proceedings to immobilise political opposition. Gayebi mamla or ghost cases with made-up accusations have proliferated exponentially. This is not to say there may be genuine instances that warrant judicial proceedings. But the eerie similarity in accusations routinely making the rounds, constant drip of stories in the media where fact-checking exposes the made-up nature of accusations, and the new innovation of including a provision for a very large number of oggatonama or "unknown" accused to slap cases on mostly opposition members hint at the underlying story quite clearly. If some diligent sociologist was to undertake a study in today's Bangladesh on the social base of opposition political parties, a likely finding would be a phenomenon of a very large number of internally displaced "political refugees" compelled to be "absent" from home in another district or another location, in an unforgiving and economically ruinous struggle to navigate the treacherous burden of such gayebi mamla. The objective of the ruling group in many such cases is not necessarily to convict, but simply to keep the accused on the run.
The other key concerning aspect of the pre-election environment is how confrontational are street realities. On this count, the political opposition has been remarkable in its dogged pursuit of peaceful mobilisation over the preceding year-long run up to the upcoming election. But to what extent this will sustain remains an open question as the political positions of the ruling party and the opposition remain diametrically opposed. It is a moot question whether the heavy-handed police action and the return of hartal is signalling the beginning of a breakdown in the delicate tight-rope walking that has so far characterised the pre-election environment.
Elections can also become "unfair" in the quality of election management both in setting the stage for the election and the quality of oversight over the election process on election day. There have been three syndromes at work here contributing to making the election unfair. First has to do with partisan decisions on granting registration to new political party applicants or on the approved list of election-observing bodies. The recent decisions on these matters have already marked the new Election Commission with a partisan stamp. Recent public utterances by some of the commissioners only reinforce the perception. The second election commission syndrome making elections unfair is the ready surrender of its powers to the executive branch to choose returning officers at district/sub-district level and presiding officers for election centres, despite the knowledge that the umbilical cord between the ruling party and the administration is too strong to avoid partisan management of election. Yet, this need not be if the Election Commission decides to exercise its jurisdictional powers. Similarly, an additional syndrome at work is the propensity of the partisan Election Commission to adopt an attitude of "see nothing, do nothing" when blatant anomalies occur on the election day. These anomalies can range from open ballot stuffing, voter intimidation within the booth, voter intimidation outside the centre, to pre-election day voter intimidation, prevention of voters from reaching the centre, etc.
What makes an election fair? Ruling party spokespersons appear to suggest that their 'assurances' should suffice to put the matter at rest. However, there is universal scepticism about relying only on such assurances. But rather than dwelling on definitional debates on what constitutes 'fairness,' a more meaningful political discussion is about how elections become 'unfair.' One does not need to go far to find the answers to this question.
Elections can be made unfair even after voting has ceased in terms of how counting is supervised and results announced. Recent experiences have thrown up these bitter truths time after time. And this tendency has extended to controlling the post-election narrative, too, by various types of media curbs.
Will the next election be fair? Howsoever the current political uncertainties work out, the road to a fair election appears neither certain nor easy. At least three factors absolutely have to be addressed to reverse the entrenched unfair realities bearing on the election. The Election Commission has to be purged of its partisan tendency. It has to take control of the election process from the authority of administration. And most importantly, the ongoing suppression of political competition through the weaponisation of criminal proceedings a gayebi mamla has to be reversed perhaps through a general amnesty and a moratorium on further such cases. This perhaps lies at the heart of the demand for a non-partisan poll-time government. However that may be, such a step can be a game-changing, confidence-building measure that can radically alter the political mood. But the prospect of this seems distant for now with the violence centring October 28 political programmes hardening the political mood in the opposite direction. Nevertheless, it may be wise to keep the fair election priorities in focus.
Hossain Zillur Rahman is an economist and political sociologist, and executive chairman of Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC).
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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