. Special
Jayanta Roy Chowdhury
New Delhi, Feb 13 (.) Belying all expectations, two months after returning from 17 years of self-imposed exile in London, Tarique Rahman has managed to lead the Bangladesh Nationalist Party to a sweeping victory.
The stunning victory which saw the BNP winning more than two-thirds of the contested seats and filling a vacuum left by the controversial banning of the Awami League, has catapulted a man without any past experience in governance to the position of head of a nation of 170 million people at a critical juncture in the life of Bangladesh.
In a country long accustomed to politics as inheritance, Rahman’s ascent felt both inevitable and improbable. He is the eldest son of Zia ur-Rahman, the former army officer who declared Bangladesh’s independence in 1971 and later ruled first as a strongman and then as an elected president, and Khaleda Zia, who served twice as prime minister.
For decades, Bangladeshi public life has revolved around a “battle of Begums’ Begum Zia versus Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of bangladesh’s founding father Sheikh Mujib. The feud, operatic in its intensity, shaped a generation’s sense of loyalty and grievance.
Rahman grew up in the penumbra of that rivalry. During his mother’s governments in the nineteen-nineties and early two-thousands, he held no formal office.
But in Dhaka’s drawing rooms and ministries, it was widely understood that proximity to Tarique could be as valuable as proximity to the prime minister herself. Admirers called him the party’s strategist and moderniser, though critics used a different vocabulary, terming him “princeling,” “gatekeeper.”
The charges that accumulated during the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s 2001–2006 term led Transparency International to rank Bangladesh, the world’s most corrupt country for four consecutive years.
As the government’s tenure drew to a close in 2006, the country seemed headed toward an election few trusted. A military-backed caretaker administration intervened and in the upheaval that followed, Rahman was arrested and imprisoned for eighteen months.
He faced dozens of cases from embezzlement, money laundering to even alleged involvement in a grenade attack on an Awami League rally, where the target was Hasina. Leaked American diplomatic cables from that era described him in scathing terms as “widely considered one of the most corrupt individuals in Bangladesh,” and “notorious for flagrantly and frequently demanding bribes,” to “a symbol of kleptocratic government and violent politics.”
For a time, his political career appeared finished as he left for London, supposedly, for medical treatment and remained there, a remote presence issuing statements and guiding party affairs from afar. Politics in Bangladesh, however, has a long memory and a short shelf life. Many of the cases against Rahman have since been overturned or withdrawn under the caretaker government led by Mohammed Yunus.
This happened after Yunus made a dash for UK, when faced with a street revolt by the BNP and met Rahman. What happened at the meeting remains shrouded in mystery but the cases were withdrawn and the ‘Prince’ ultimately returned home when his mother was on her deathbed.
If exile softened his image, the country he has returned to is anything but gentle. Nearly half of Bangladesh’s garment factories have shut down or hover near closure. Inflation has gnawed at household incomes; the currency has weakened; import restrictions meant to preserve foreign reserves have pinched manufacturing and disrupted energy supplies.
A small but symbolically potent tariff skirmish with India has made everyday goods more expensive. In the rural and semi-urban hinterland, complaints of extortion and land-grabbing by his party’s henchmen have grown louder. It is into this mood, restless, fatigued, hungry for order, that Rahman has stepped into.
At rallies, he promised to bring “peace to the land” and to protect citizens “from all sections” and all faiths. Even his references to India, Bangladesh’s larger neighbours which is often criticised by his party of being “Big Brotherly” behaviour, have been measured.
He has spoken of water-sharing and sovereignty in tones calibrated to domestic sensitivities without tipping into outright hostility. For a politician long caricatured as impulsive and imperious, the restraint is notable.
For many Bangladeshis, Rahman represents not only the possibility of change but the return of a system they remember too well. The middle class and women voters, mobilised in the absence of the Awami League, have placed a wager on stability over vendetta and voted for him.
Jamaat-e-Islami’s expanded voter base remains a potential spoiler, a reminder that Bangladesh’s ideological fault lines are never far from the surface. But then that will be a battle which he will have to fight another day.
Right now, Rahman’s task will be to bring peace to a troubled land, satisfy neighbours irritated by unnecessary hostility shown by a previous, competent regime and try and get trade deals through which will help revive a once booming economy back into shape. . JRC
