Politicians outnumbered by businessmen!

Twenty of the candidates of the Awami League-led grand alliance and two of the BNP-allied Jatiya Oikya Front, out of around 600 contestants of the two sides in the 11th parliamentary elections, are fully politicians.

These are the people who consider politics as their profession, according to an analysis of the declarations of the candidates submitted to the election commission.

Seven other candidates -- six from the grand alliance and one from Oikya Front -- have mentioned their occupation to be both politics and business.

However, a total of 329 candidates or 55 per cent of 600 candidates are businessmen, the declarations say.

The number of professional politicians including the candidates who declare their occupation both as politics and business is even lower than the number of professionals who are 36 from the two major alliances.

Even if all the politicians in two categories are elected, they would be 29 or less than 10 per cent in 300-member parliament.

So, the analysis suggests, predominance of the professional businessmen will remain intact in the 11th Jatiya Sangsad (national assembly) like the cases in the past few national elections and parliament.

The businessmen had first outnumbered the politicians in the 1991 parliamentary polls, records show.

The ruling Awami League camp nominated as many as 153 businessmen as its candidates in the 11th parliamentary elections, as against 176 from Jatiya Oikya Front.

The percentage of businesspersons as members of parliament (MPs) suddenly rose to 53 per cent in 1991 and their representation increased to 56 per cent through the 2008 elections.

After the country's first parliamentary elections in 1973, lawyers who were elected MPs were 27 per cent compared to percentage of businessmen as MPs at 24, found a research report.

Political scientist Rounaq Jahan and senior researcher Inge Amundsen of Christian Michelsen Institute conducted the research titled ‘The Parliament of Bangladesh: Representation and Accountability'.

Analysing professions of elected MPs from 1970 to 2012, they showed that in 1991 election, the businessmen (53 per cent) outnumbered the lawyers (19 per cent).

MPs having background of serving civil and military bureaucracy also increased to 8 per cent in 1991 parliament.

About the trend of depleted number of politicians in parliament and rising dominance of businessmen, secretary of Sushasoner Jonno Nagorik (Shujon), Badiul Alam Majumdar said the nominations have reflected how politics has been commercialised over the years.

“Businessmen consider politics to be a kind of business. They want to make profit from politics and the issue of public welfare is thus neglected,” he expressed his views.

“It's obvious that the future parliament will not be in favour of the public. It will protect the vested interests of the MPs,” he added.

The two coalitions have nominated 289 candidates with graduate, post graduate and higher degrees, according to the declarations.

The grand alliance has nominated 129 graduates and the Oikya Front 128. Oikya Front has 195 candidates with post graduate degrees as against the grand alliance's 102. The grand alliance has picked 13 with higher degrees as against the Front's 12.

Each of the two camps has nominated 9 persons, who declared themselves a self-educated. However, there is no criterion for defining what makes a person 'self-educated'.

Both the camps have the same share of persons having passed their primary, secondary and higher secondary exams.

And the two coalitions have one candidate each who has not mentioned education qualifications at all.

*This report, originally appared in Prothom Alo print edition, has been rewritten in English by Farjana Liakat