The aftermath of the Tulip Siddiq debacle in Britain

The conviction of British MP Tulip Siddiq was significant news in Britain last Monday, where it was the second item on the flagship BBC Radio 4 news broadcast at one o’clock and reported elsewhere.

This followed a story the week before about an open letter to the Bangladesh High Commission in London, drafted by senior British lawyers. As reported by the Guardian newspaper, the letter seems largely concerned with issues of legal due process. “Due process” concerns the framework in which a matter is prosecuted and adjudicated and not the substantive arguments advanced by either side. The presence or absence of adequate legal representation is, for instance, a matter of due process.

Plenty of commentators in Bangladesh have held forth on whether Ms Siddiq was afforded due process. Here, I do not concern myself with such issues at all. Nor do I consider any of the substantive arguments in court. Instead, I focus on an aspect of the affair that has received much less attention, namely the Bangladesh government’s handling of the matter in the UK public space and the media relations disaster. I also consider what is, beyond the present moment, the greatest significance of the whole fiasco, arguably, its impact on ongoing Bangladeshi efforts at asset recovery outside Bangladesh, as they relate to any person.

On reviewing British press coverage on Monday, it was starkly apparent that the interim government (IG) had failed to provide a counter-narrative, leaving the field clear for Ms Siddiq and her public or media relations team. Whether the IG had even bothered trying to offer a counter-narrative, I do not know.

The working methods of the IG’s press office are presumably calibrated to the Bangladeshi environment but they have proven disastrously ineffective in the UK. To begin with, the IG’s press office is largely a reactive institution. It rarely takes the initiative to head off imminent risks, even when those risks are visible long in advance, and time and again it has been flat-footed in its response to controversies as they arise.

Consider also the tone of indignation that we so often see in statements by IG officials in the media, including social media, the sense of grievance that the IG has been maligned or the country unjustly treated. That tone of indignation might work in Bangladesh or in relation to the egregious misrepresentations of Indian news media. But it would be entirely the wrong tone to deploy in the UK, where it would backfire.

Within twelve hours of news of Siddiq’s conviction breaking, the UK news media moved on from the story. For one thing, the UK news cycle was already caught up in stories to do with the budget and the British finance minister. As things stand and barring some substantial new information, Siddiq's position as an MP in the UK is now even more secure than it was before the court verdict. Maybe she won’t ever visit Bangladesh again, because of the risk of arrest, but I, for one, would not be surprised if Siddiq, a British citizen and parliamentarian, returned to a position in the front benches of the British government by next summer.

There has been no real-time counter to Siddiq’s narrative. And there has been no response to the letter signed by lawyers from across the political spectrum.

It’s important to note that this letter was not a representation made in the course of any legal proceedings against Siddiq in the UK and it was not a submission to a court in Bangladesh. Nor was it any kind of “letter before action,” or a warning to a party to cease or desist from some or other activity. But such letters are not uncommon in the public space outside a courtroom.

Let me remind readers. That letter came a whole week before the court’s verdict, which means that the IG had a whole week’s notice of exactly what kind of issues might arise on announcement of the court’s verdict. That’s a whole week for the IG to prepare. 

During that week, the UK media published nothing in  response from the IG explaining why those lawyers’ claims of a lack of due process were unfounded. Like news media the world over, UK news media revels in conflict. If the IG had offered a decent rebuttal, the news media would have jumped at reporting it. But did the IG even respond to the senior lawyers, let alone address the specific due process claims of those lawyers?

There’s no evidence that the IG engaged a public relations company in the UK or even talked to people familiar with the British media and legal landscape. If they had, they would have been told that every story, if not every headline, would carry the words “trial in-absentia.” They would have been told that in the absence of pre-emptive pushback from the IG, those words would, rightly or wrongly, be understood in the UK, as elsewhere, as synonymous with a lack of due process.

Moreover, the government would have been told that Siddiq would seek to frame the issue exclusively as one of due process, even before the court in Bangladesh announced its verdict.

Because of the IG’s failure to prepare and act ahead of time, the lasting impression left in the UK is that Bangladesh does not respect basic principles of the rule of law. This may not be the right impression but the Bangladesh government did nothing to head off that impression or counter it when Siddiq’s PR team set to work. After all, how would the British political class—which knows and cares little about Bangladesh—reconcile the fact that this MP has a conviction in Bangladesh with the fact that she is still a UK MP? That political class will draw the lazy conclusion, however lacking in nuance, that the Bangladeshi court was a kangaroo one.

One obvious impact of this lasting impression relates to prospective or ongoing Bangladeshi asset recovery efforts in the UK, Singapore, or elsewhere, relating to anyone. Those efforts were already handicapped by the fact that the government trumpeted its intentions publicly, thereby tipping off all potential targets, no doubt prompting such targets to convert assets or ownership within days if not hours, and thereby evade recovery. 

The Siddiq debacle now adds a further layer of difficulty. International asset recovery relies on assistance from the local executive broadly and not just from prosecutorial or policing authorities. It requires overseas political will, however much democratic politicians might publicly state that the process is independent of politicians.

Anyone who has been involved in seeking asset recovery knows this and there’s a simple reason why this is so: The UK has nothing to gain materially by assisting in asset recovery. But it might assist where there is something to lose politically by failing to assist. Rightly or wrongly, the Siddiq affair now leaves Bangladesh tainted in the eyes of the British political and punditry class as a country with defective due process norms. This renders suspect any claims the country’s executive makes under the banner of asset recovery. All this follows from an inadequate response from the IG, in timeliness and substance, to something that was eminently foreseeable.

In English idiom, the IG would be called a “lame-duck“ government, an administration close to the end of its term of office, when it no longer has time to carry out any substantive initiatives, or when its political capital is otherwise spent. Criticism of its inaction and ineptitude will thus be of no use to the current government but perhaps this whole episode can act as an instructive and cautionary tale for the next one.

Note: Certain amendments have been made to the text to remove any confusion and the corrected text has now been republished at 01:13 am, Monday, 8 December.

*The views expressed here are the writer's own.