Sheikh Hasina had overstayed her welcome as Bangladesh Prime Minister
By Nantoo Banerjee
The United States of America or the People’s Republic of China may have nothing much to do with the massive public demonstrations in Bangladesh that began last month over governmental job quotas forcing the fall of Sheikh Hasina as the country’s longest serving prime minister and her government. Sheikh Hasina had dug her own grave firstly by rigging the last national election, which was totally boycotted by her party’s prime opposition, right-wing Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its 19 other allies, demanding the polls be held under a caretaker government. In the past, Bangladesh had been run by caretaker governments before elections.
However, in 2011, the Awami League government abolished the caretaker system by pushing through the 15th constitutional amendment. Secondly, the introduction of a controversial quota system for government jobs favouring diehard Awami League supporters or dependents of the country’s freedom movement. The quota proposal was scaled back by the country’s apex court, after a massive nationwide protest by students for days, leading to deadly clashes between police and demonstrators killing scores of people. The country’s Supreme Court ordered that 93 percent of jobs be allocated on merit. The unemployment rate for the young educated people in Bangladesh has risen sharply over the last five years.
In January, the Hasina-led left-of-centre Awami League had won a record fourth straight term in the national election. The party was nearly unopposed. The latest student-led public demonstrations and violence against the Hasina government, in which more than 300 people were killed, continued for nearly a month before she decided to quit and take temporary asylum in India. It is true that both the US and China were unhappy with Prime Minister Hasina. The US was unhappy because of her deep strategic involvement with China. The US Department of Defence, in a report, had expressed concern over China’s growing influence in the region.
The US might or might not have approached Sheikh Hasina for a lease of the tiny 7.3-km-long mostly-flat St Martin’s Island, situated close to the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar at an elevation of 3.6 metres above the mean sea level, which she allegedly refused to give for good reasons. It would be foolish on the part of the US to expect such a gesture from the Bangladesh government upsetting China. It would also be absolutely absurd to claim a US hand behind the massive public uprising against the former Hasina government involving millions of citizens of Bangladesh.
Ironically, India, which provided her with temporary political asylum, should as well be highly unhappy with her government’s near total surrender to China over the years. China is the largest supplier of defence equipment to Bangladesh. Indirectly, it controls the Bangladesh defence department. The country’s military bosses are in continuous dialogue with China. Dhaka is Beijing’s second biggest defence customer, after Pakistan. Bangladesh has acquired sizable military hardware from China in recent years, including corvettes, naval guns, anti-ship missiles and surface-to-air missile systems. Last year, a China-built $1.2-billion six-slot submarine base, named BNS Sheikh Hasina, was inaugurated at Pekua in Cox’s Bazar. The Naval Base, about 200 miles southeast of Dhaka, was built to increase Bangladesh’s naval capacity after the demarcation of its maritime boundary with India and Myanmar. This submarine base in the Bay of Bengal is a major concern for India from its strategic standpoint. Hasina did not care. The Chinese-built submarine base in India’s backyard could disrupt the regional balance of power and complicate the tense geopolitical situation in the Bay of Bengal.
China’s growing military presence in Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina has been a strategic concern for the US as much as for India. Sheikh Hasina’s last foreign trip to China as the Bangladesh prime minister to meet her counterpart Li Qiang as well as President Xi Jinping was on July 10. The two countries signed 21 agreements and announced seven new projects. The visit also saw Beijing and Dhaka elevating their “strategic partnership” to a “comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership,” according to Bangladesh’s state-run news agency BSS. However, Sheikh Hasina had cut short her Beijing trip by a day, giving rise to the speculation that all did not go well with that visit and, probably, she did not get what she wanted from the Chinese authorities. Her government was already facing political turmoil under growing student unrest and public protests. Having given so much strategic inroads to China, could she have asked for some kind of help from the People’s Republic of China to stem the internal political rot which the Chinese authorities might have turned down?
For China, which is practically in military and economic control of Bangladesh, it does not really matter which political dispensation is in power in Bangladesh today. At the end of last year, China’s investment stock in Bangladesh increased substantially, and there were nearly 700 Chinese-funded companies in Bangladesh, creating more than 550,000 jobs, with bilateral ties continuing to tighten, according to the Chinese Embassy in Bangladesh. According to the United Nations COMTRADE database, China’s exports to Bangladesh in 2023 were worth US$22.95 billion as against its import worth $1.03 billion, making the trade between the two countries highly lopsided.
China is also the biggest lender to Bangladesh. Lately, Bangladesh has been reeling under a debt trap. As of August 4, 2024, Bangladesh has received $1.15 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as part of a $4.7 billion loan package. The loan was approved in January 2023 to help Bangladesh withstand a foreign reserves crisis and high inflation. Bangladesh’s total external debt as of December 2023 has reached $100.6 billion. Of this the share of public sector debt was 79.2% while that of the private sector was 20.8% as per data from the Economic Relations Division.
Going by the fast-expanding trade, economic and strategic relations between Bangladesh and China since Hasina returned to power in 2009, causing agony and tensions for India, the latter should have refrained from providing political asylum to Sheikh Hasina to maintain India’s neutral stand on the internal political crisis in the neighbouring state. Back home, Hasina is facing murder charges. What will the government of India do, if Bangladesh demands Sheikh Hasina’s repatriation from India for trial? Bangladesh Home Affairs Adviser Brigadier General (retd.) Sakhawat Hossain speculated that 500 or more protestors and policemen were killed during the three weeks of violence. India has always misread poker-faced Hasina’s strong internal resolve. India seems to be in a tricky situation. (IPA Service)