Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as soon as joined her rivals in a struggle to revive democracy however her lengthy reign in energy has been marked by arrests of opposition leaders, crackdowns on free speech and suppression of dissent.
Hasina, 76, received a fourth straight term and fifth total in energy by sweeping Sunday’s basic election, which was boycotted by the primary opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Get together (BNP) for the second time within the final three polls.
Hasina branded the primary opposition celebration a “terrorist organisation”.
The daughter of the nation’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan, Hasina was lucky to have been visiting Europe when most of her members of the family had been assassinated in a army coup in 1975.
Born in 1947 in southwestern Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, Hasina was the eldest of 5 kids. She graduated with a level in Bengali literature from Dhaka College in 1973 and gained political expertise as a go-between for her father and his scholar followers.
She returned to Bangladesh from India, the place she lived in exile, in 1981 and later joined fingers with political foe, BNP chief and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, to guide a preferred rebellion for democracy that toppled army ruler Hossain Mohammad Ershad from energy in 1990.
However the alliance with Zia didn’t final lengthy and the bitter and deep-rooted rivalry between the 2 girls, typically known as the “battling begums”, went on to dominate Bangladeshi politics for many years.
Hasina first served a time period as prime minister in 1996 however misplaced to Zia 5 years later. The pair had been then imprisoned on corruption prices in 2007 after a coup by a military-backed authorities.
The fees had been dropped they usually had been free to contest an election the next yr. Hasina received in a landslide and has been in energy ever since.
As time went on, she turned more and more autocratic and her rule has been marked by mass arrests of political opponents and activists, compelled disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
The 78-year-old Zia in the meantime is in ailing well being and confined to hospital after corruption prices noticed her sentenced to a 17-year jail time period in 2018. High BNP leaders have been despatched behind bars whereas Zia’s eldest son and inheritor obvious Tarique Rahman is in exile in Britain.
Rights teams have warned of a digital one-party rule by Hasina’s Awami League.
Hasina refused BNP calls for to resign and permit a impartial authority to run the election, accusing the opposition of instigating antigovernment protests which have rocked Dhaka since late October and killed at the least 14 folks.
Each Hasina and her rivals have accused their opponents of attempting to create chaos and violence to thwart political peace and jeopardise the democracy that has but to take agency root within the South Asian nation of 170 million folks.
Hasina mentioned she didn’t have to show the credibility of the election to anybody. “What’s essential is that if the folks of Bangladesh will settle for this election.”
Asif Nazrul, professor of regulation at Dhaka College, instructed Al Jazeera Hasina is a “shrewd” politician however historical past will bear in mind her as a frontrunner “who stayed in energy by repression, not standard mandate”.
“By no means within the historical past of this area has a politician stayed in energy regardless of missing folks’s mandate,” he mentioned. “In actual fact, I’d name her unpopular now as [Sunday’s] turnout has confirmed what proportion of individuals’s help Hasina and her celebration has.”
Nazrul mentioned Hasina has “arrange a milestone earlier than the world on how a frontrunner can set up full autocracy in a nation within the garb of democracy”.
“However that’s not a legacy one must be happy with,” he mentioned.
Blended legacy of 15-year rule
Hasina has been praised by supporters for main Bangladesh by a outstanding economic boom, largely on the again of the principally feminine manufacturing unit workforce powering its garment export business.
Bangladesh, one of many world’s poorest international locations when it gained independence from Pakistan in 1971, has grown a median of greater than 6 % annually since 2009.
Poverty has plummeted and greater than 95 % of the nation’s 170 million folks now have entry to electrical energy, with per capita revenue overtaking India in 2021.
Hasina additionally acquired worldwide approval for opening Bangladesh’s doorways to a whole bunch of 1000’s of Rohingya refugees fleeing a 2017 army crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar.
She has been hailed for a decisive crackdown on hardline Muslim teams after 5 homegrown extremists stormed a Dhaka cafe standard with Western expatriates and killed 22 folks in 2016.
However Hasina’s intolerance in direction of dissent has given rise to resentment at dwelling and expressions of concern from the Western powers.
5 high Muslim leaders and a senior opposition determine had been executed over the previous decade after convictions for crimes towards humanity dedicated in the course of the nation’s brutal 1971 liberation warfare.
As a substitute of therapeutic the injuries of that battle, the trials triggered mass protests and lethal clashes. Her opponents branded the trials a farce, saying they had been a politically motivated train designed to silence dissent.
America imposed sanctions on an elite department of Bangladesh’s safety forces and 7 of its high officers over prices of widespread human rights abuses.
In the meantime, the financial system has additionally slowed sharply for the reason that Russia-Ukraine warfare pushed up costs of gasoline and meals imports, forcing Bangladesh to show final yr to the Worldwide Financial Fund for a $4.7bn bailout.
Inflation was 9.5 % in November, one of many highest in many years, and tackling will probably be one in every of Hasina’s largest challenges in her subsequent time period whereas the highlight can be on how she offers with upholding democracy.
Munshi Faiz Ahmed, former director-general of Bangladesh Institute of Worldwide and Strategic Research, a state-funded suppose tank on safety and strategic points, known as Hasina “maybe probably the most strategic political maneuverer in Bangladesh’s historical past”.
Ahmed, additionally a former Bangladeshi ambassador to China, instructed Al Jazeera that one must be aware of the circumstances wherein Hasina operated within the final decade: an enormous inhabitants cramped in a small land with scant mineral assets, a divided and opinionated public, and steady stress from the worldwide and regional powers.
“She skilfully dealt with all these components and led Bangladesh to a place of prosperity and significance. As a politician, she is extra competent than anybody else in current historical past,” he mentioned.
Within the aftermath of a tainted election, Ahmed mentioned Hasina had been profitable in tackling Western stress to date and on the identical time was in a position to set up good relations with China, India and Russia – all of which have backed her authorities.
“It’s now not a unipolar world, it’s fairly multipolar. So, I don’t suppose her authorities will face any downside now.”
Faisal Mahmud contributed from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
