Fifty Years of Electioneering in Bangladesh: The Collapse of a Constitutional Design

M Jashim Ali Chowdhury

Book Chapter in M Rafiqul Islam and Muhammad Ekramul Haque (eds), The Constitutional Law of Bangladesh: Progression and Transformation at its 50th Anniversary (Springer Nature, Singapore, July 2023) pp 173-193

Publisher's Link: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-99-2579-7_10

Abstract

The orderly transfer of power through regular, participatory, free, fair, and credible election is the most fundamental, though not the only, requirement of democratic constitutionalism. Bangladesh’s 50 years-long electioneering experience represents a constitutional design spoiled by a culturally illiberal value system. This chapter argues that the problems of elections in Bangladesh are twofold. First, Bangladesh’s formal institutional design of electioneering is undermined by its purposeful abuse at the hands of its personalised, clientelist and competitively illiberal ‘Eastminster’ political system. The power-perpetuating tendency of the system prefers elections that could prevent the people from choosing their representatives – elections of ‘Preventive Representation’. Secondly, the reform initiatives undertaken at different stages of Bangladesh’s political history show a visible lack of ‘Democratic-instrumental Vision’, which would ask for institutional imagination on the reformers’ part. Bangladesh’s ‘independent’ Election Commission has been successfully co-opted. Later, an unusual structure of caretaker government was established, tempered and lastly, done away with as a matter of elite preference devoid of public participation.