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Dyer: Violent protests, coup up next in Bangladesh | The London Free Press
Dyer: Violent protests, coup up next in Bangladesh
Thursday, January 9, 2014 9:51:24 EST AM
Last Sunday they held an election in Bangladesh, and nobody came.
Well, practically nobody. Turnout was down from 70% in the last election to only 20%. Some stayed away on principle, but others were frightened away by the violence: More than 100 polling stations set on fire, and 200 dead in political violence in the last two months.
The past is back with a vengeance in Bangladesh.
In the past 20 years, the country has seen rapid economic growth, a steeply falling birth rate and the advent of universal primary education. Average life span is 70 years, and average income has doubled since 1975.
Not bad for the world's most densely populated large country, with few natural resources and 160 million people crammed into the same area as the Maritime provinces.
But the narrative is changing again.
The problem is politics. Ever since the return of democracy in 1991, Bangladeshi politics has been dominated by two women who loathe each other.
Sheikh Hasina, currently prime minister and leader of the left-leaning, secular Awami League, is the daughter of the country's "founding father," Mujibur Rahman, who was murdered in 1975 with almost all his family by rebel army officers.
Her opponent of 20 years is Khaleda Zia, leader of the conservative, more religiously inclined Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). She is the widow of Gen. Ziaur Rahman, who became president after several more military coups and was himself assassinated in yet another coup in 1981.
Zia's husband was not one of the plotters who murdered the father of Sheikh Hasina, but the latter sees him as from the same stable.
Nevertheless, the two women have generally shown enough respect for the democratic process that the country has prospered while they alternated in power since 1991.
Even in 1996, when the Awami League boycotted the election and the BNP won by a landslide, the two leaders managed to finesse their way out of the crisis.
The new BNP-dominated parliament amended the constitution to allow a neutral caretaker government to take over and supervise new elections, which the Awami League won.
But this time the things have gone off the rails.
Sheikh Hasina, who has been prime minister since 2009, abolished the neutral caretaker system in 2010. So when she announced an election on Jan. 5 that would be run by her own Awami League government, the BNP assumed the election would be rigged and declared it would boycott it.
The Awami League won 127 seats where there was no opposition candidate and 105 of the 147 contested seats. It holds more than three-quarters of the seats in the new parliament, but it has no democratic credibility.
This outcome is all the more surprising because Sheikh Hasina was in precisely Zia's shoes 17 years ago, when the BNP rigged the election and the Awami League staged the boycott.
She must have known her rival would respond exactly the same way, and that the only escape from the resultant crisis would be to bring back the neutral caretaker to supervise a rerun of the election.
She knew that, and yet she did it anyway, which means she must be determined to ride out the protests and not allow any caretaker government or election rerun. This is a formula for escalating violence and an eventual military coup. Bangladesh is in trouble.
-- Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Gwynne Dyer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gwynne Dyer, OC (born April 17, 1943) is a London-based independent Canadian journalist, syndicated columnist and military historian.
Dyer was born in St. John's, Newfoundland and joined the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve at the age of sixteen. While still in the naval reserve, he obtained a BA in history from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1963; an MA in military history from Rice University,Houston, Texas, in 1966; and a PhD in military and Middle Eastern history at King's College London in 1973. Dyer served in the Canadian, American and British naval reserves. He was employed as a senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, 1973-77. In 1973 he began writing articles for leading London newspapers on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and soon decided to abandon academic life for a full-time career in journalism. In 2010, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.[1]
Circulation
Dyer writes a column on international affairs which is published in over 175 papers in at least 45 countries.[2] Some papers that use Dyer's column regularly include the Japan Times, The Courier (Ballarat), the Straits Times (Singapore), the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), the Bangkok Post, the Canberra Times, the New Zealand Herald, The Pioneer (New Delhi), DNA (Bombay), Dawn (Karachi), the Tehran Times, Arab News (Saudi Arabia), the Jordan Times, Monday Morning (Beirut), Egypt Today, the Jerusalem Post,Hurriyet Daily News (Istanbul), the Moscow Times, Telegraf (Kiev), Lidove Noviny (Prague), Adevarul (Bucharest), Helsingin Sanomat (Finland), Information (Copenhagen), NRC Handelsblad (Rotterdam), De Standaard (Brussels), Zeitpunkt (Switzerland), Internazionale (Rome), The New Vision (Uganda), The Star (Nairobi), Zimbabwe Independent, The Citizen (Johannesburg), the Cape Times, Le Droit (Ottawa), NOW (Toronto), La Presse (Montreal), Georgia Straight (Vancouver), Dawson Creek Daily News, Fast Forward Magazine (Calgary), the Winnipeg Free Press the Jamaica Daily Gleaner, the Trinidad Express, the Barbados Advocate, Buenos Aires Herald, The Hitavada (India), Cyprus Mailand the Visayan Daily Star (Philippines).
In the United States, his column appears in the Cincinnati Post, Columbus Dispatch, Dayton Daily News, Hartford Courant, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Newsday, Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Raleigh News & Observer, The Sacramento Bee, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Salt Lake Tribune, San Diego Union-Tribune, Toledo Blade, Winston-Salem Journal and about twenty other papers. Older articles are available online at the columnist's official website. His 1985 book War and its namesake television series have been aired on BBC and PBS.
Controversial discontinuations
Dyer's column was discontinued in the Jerusalem Post in 1997 when it was bought by Conrad Black. Black subsequently bought the former Southam chain in Canada, which included most of the country's big-city English-language dailies, and had Dyer's column expelled from all of them as well. When the Asper family, owners of Canwest Global, took over ownership of the papers in 2002, they maintained the ban. This had the result that Dyer's column has since been unavailable in the more mainstream Canadian newspapers, and consequently completely unavailable in large parts of the country.[3] Smaller media companies continue to publish the column, including alternatively owned newspapers such as Torstar's Hamilton Spectator, Edmonton's Vue Weekly, Vancouver's Georgia Straight, New Brunswick's Telegraph Journal and French paper l'Acadie Nouvelle, Sun Mediapapers such as the London Free Press and a few local publications of the regional Osprey Media and Black Press[4] (not affiliated with Conrad Black), such as Kamloops This Week and the Red Deer Advocate, as well as the Winnipeg Free Press and Calgary's independent Fast Forward Weekly.
Dyer speculates that this is due to his opinions on the Arab-Israel conflict and both Black's and the Asper family's Likud Party sympathies. In 2005, Dyer released a book of his columns, titled With Every Mistake.[3]
Works
Books
Dyer: Violent protests, coup up next in Bangladesh
Thursday, January 9, 2014 9:51:24 EST AM
Last Sunday they held an election in Bangladesh, and nobody came.
Well, practically nobody. Turnout was down from 70% in the last election to only 20%. Some stayed away on principle, but others were frightened away by the violence: More than 100 polling stations set on fire, and 200 dead in political violence in the last two months.
The past is back with a vengeance in Bangladesh.
In the past 20 years, the country has seen rapid economic growth, a steeply falling birth rate and the advent of universal primary education. Average life span is 70 years, and average income has doubled since 1975.
Not bad for the world's most densely populated large country, with few natural resources and 160 million people crammed into the same area as the Maritime provinces.
But the narrative is changing again.
The problem is politics. Ever since the return of democracy in 1991, Bangladeshi politics has been dominated by two women who loathe each other.
Sheikh Hasina, currently prime minister and leader of the left-leaning, secular Awami League, is the daughter of the country's "founding father," Mujibur Rahman, who was murdered in 1975 with almost all his family by rebel army officers.
Her opponent of 20 years is Khaleda Zia, leader of the conservative, more religiously inclined Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). She is the widow of Gen. Ziaur Rahman, who became president after several more military coups and was himself assassinated in yet another coup in 1981.
Zia's husband was not one of the plotters who murdered the father of Sheikh Hasina, but the latter sees him as from the same stable.
Nevertheless, the two women have generally shown enough respect for the democratic process that the country has prospered while they alternated in power since 1991.
Even in 1996, when the Awami League boycotted the election and the BNP won by a landslide, the two leaders managed to finesse their way out of the crisis.
The new BNP-dominated parliament amended the constitution to allow a neutral caretaker government to take over and supervise new elections, which the Awami League won.
But this time the things have gone off the rails.
Sheikh Hasina, who has been prime minister since 2009, abolished the neutral caretaker system in 2010. So when she announced an election on Jan. 5 that would be run by her own Awami League government, the BNP assumed the election would be rigged and declared it would boycott it.
The Awami League won 127 seats where there was no opposition candidate and 105 of the 147 contested seats. It holds more than three-quarters of the seats in the new parliament, but it has no democratic credibility.
This outcome is all the more surprising because Sheikh Hasina was in precisely Zia's shoes 17 years ago, when the BNP rigged the election and the Awami League staged the boycott.
She must have known her rival would respond exactly the same way, and that the only escape from the resultant crisis would be to bring back the neutral caretaker to supervise a rerun of the election.
She knew that, and yet she did it anyway, which means she must be determined to ride out the protests and not allow any caretaker government or election rerun. This is a formula for escalating violence and an eventual military coup. Bangladesh is in trouble.
-- Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Gwynne Dyer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gwynne Dyer, OC (born April 17, 1943) is a London-based independent Canadian journalist, syndicated columnist and military historian.
Dyer was born in St. John's, Newfoundland and joined the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve at the age of sixteen. While still in the naval reserve, he obtained a BA in history from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1963; an MA in military history from Rice University,Houston, Texas, in 1966; and a PhD in military and Middle Eastern history at King's College London in 1973. Dyer served in the Canadian, American and British naval reserves. He was employed as a senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, 1973-77. In 1973 he began writing articles for leading London newspapers on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and soon decided to abandon academic life for a full-time career in journalism. In 2010, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.[1]
Circulation
Dyer writes a column on international affairs which is published in over 175 papers in at least 45 countries.[2] Some papers that use Dyer's column regularly include the Japan Times, The Courier (Ballarat), the Straits Times (Singapore), the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), the Bangkok Post, the Canberra Times, the New Zealand Herald, The Pioneer (New Delhi), DNA (Bombay), Dawn (Karachi), the Tehran Times, Arab News (Saudi Arabia), the Jordan Times, Monday Morning (Beirut), Egypt Today, the Jerusalem Post,Hurriyet Daily News (Istanbul), the Moscow Times, Telegraf (Kiev), Lidove Noviny (Prague), Adevarul (Bucharest), Helsingin Sanomat (Finland), Information (Copenhagen), NRC Handelsblad (Rotterdam), De Standaard (Brussels), Zeitpunkt (Switzerland), Internazionale (Rome), The New Vision (Uganda), The Star (Nairobi), Zimbabwe Independent, The Citizen (Johannesburg), the Cape Times, Le Droit (Ottawa), NOW (Toronto), La Presse (Montreal), Georgia Straight (Vancouver), Dawson Creek Daily News, Fast Forward Magazine (Calgary), the Winnipeg Free Press the Jamaica Daily Gleaner, the Trinidad Express, the Barbados Advocate, Buenos Aires Herald, The Hitavada (India), Cyprus Mailand the Visayan Daily Star (Philippines).
In the United States, his column appears in the Cincinnati Post, Columbus Dispatch, Dayton Daily News, Hartford Courant, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Newsday, Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Raleigh News & Observer, The Sacramento Bee, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Salt Lake Tribune, San Diego Union-Tribune, Toledo Blade, Winston-Salem Journal and about twenty other papers. Older articles are available online at the columnist's official website. His 1985 book War and its namesake television series have been aired on BBC and PBS.
Controversial discontinuations
Dyer's column was discontinued in the Jerusalem Post in 1997 when it was bought by Conrad Black. Black subsequently bought the former Southam chain in Canada, which included most of the country's big-city English-language dailies, and had Dyer's column expelled from all of them as well. When the Asper family, owners of Canwest Global, took over ownership of the papers in 2002, they maintained the ban. This had the result that Dyer's column has since been unavailable in the more mainstream Canadian newspapers, and consequently completely unavailable in large parts of the country.[3] Smaller media companies continue to publish the column, including alternatively owned newspapers such as Torstar's Hamilton Spectator, Edmonton's Vue Weekly, Vancouver's Georgia Straight, New Brunswick's Telegraph Journal and French paper l'Acadie Nouvelle, Sun Mediapapers such as the London Free Press and a few local publications of the regional Osprey Media and Black Press[4] (not affiliated with Conrad Black), such as Kamloops This Week and the Red Deer Advocate, as well as the Winnipeg Free Press and Calgary's independent Fast Forward Weekly.
Dyer speculates that this is due to his opinions on the Arab-Israel conflict and both Black's and the Asper family's Likud Party sympathies. In 2005, Dyer released a book of his columns, titled With Every Mistake.[3]
Works
Books
- War (1985) ISBN 0-517-55615-4
- War: The Lethal Custom (2005) ISBN 0-7867-1538-3
- The Defence of Canada: In the Arms of the Empire (1990) ISBN 0-7710-2975-6
- Ignorant Armies: Sliding Into War in Iraq (2003) ISBN 0-7710-2977-2
- Future: Tense : The Coming World Order (2004) ISBN 0-7710-2978-0
- With Every Mistake (2005) ISBN 0-679-31402-4
- The Mess They Made: The Middle East After Iraq (2007) ISBN 0-7710-2980-2
- Climate Wars (2008) ISBN 978-0-307-35583-6
- Crawling from the Wreckage (2010) ISBN 978-0-307-35891-2
- War (miniseries) (1983 7-part miniseries) The third part of the series named "the Profession of Arms" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
- The Defence of Canada (1986)
- Harder Than It Looks (1987)
- The Human Race (1994)
- Seven Faces of Communism (1978)
- Brazil (1979)
- The Catholic Counter-Revolution (1980)
- War (1981)
- The Gorbachev Revolution (1988–90)
- Millennium (1996)
- Climate Wars on CBC Radio Ideas (2008)(3-part documentary)
