The pre-Taliban era president who fled Afghanistan in the wake of the US evacuation coincided with the victorious forces’ march towards Kabul in 2021, Ashraf Ghani is still supposed to act as the legitimate ruler of his country!
Ferdinand Marcos, Filipino autocrat who declined to accept his electoral loss (1986), Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran who failed to thwart the Ayatullah Ruhullah Khomeini-orchestrated Islamic Revolution (1979) and Chiang Kai-Sek, the Chinese statesman who had not been able to stop Mao Tse-Tung-led Communist revolutionaries from capturing mainland China (1949) – why won’t they be considered the legitimate rulers posthumously, notwithstanding their exits from respective motherlands?
Around the 20th century, many rulers like them had hurriedly left their countries escaping potential death or detention in view of public wrath or revolutionary actions, without formally resigning from their official posts. Whether they got back power later on, might not be known to Awami League’s alleged violence ‘guru’ Nanak (Jahangir Kabir) and others.
Maybe that’s why Mr Nanak and like-minded elements appeared on the social media and lodged their claim that it is Sheikh Hasina who is the legitimate prime minister of Bangladesh.
Of course, the Awami League party men and supporters found certain ground to argue when Md Shahabuddin, the President appointed by Sheikh Hasina and still staying at the Bangabhaban, recently said that he had not received the hard copy of the resignation letter of the ousted prime minister.
Then started hue and cry about the existence of the letter and came the demand from student leaders for the removal of the sitting President.
The ‘story’ the President narrated to senior journalist Motiur Rahman Chowdhury about Hasina’s resignation letter, not only proved to be false the acknowledgement of the resignation in his address to the nation on 6 August, also that is not tenable legally. Accompanied by the chiefs of three defence services, the President then told the nation that the prime minister had submitted her resignation and he also accepted it.
Moments after Hasina’s ‘disappearance’ from the scene on5 August, it was widely reported in the media that Hasina resigned and left the country. What a matter of concern that the resignation letter was lost from the Bangabhaban!
In the recent audio record, the voice of witch is believed to be Sheikh Hasina’s, divulged on the social media, she is heard to have said she had not resigned from the post of the prime minister before she flew to India from the Ganabhaban in Dhaka. Neither Hasina nor Awami League denied the authenticity of the conversation.
However, she did not also make clear the arrangement under which she managed to flee Dhaka evading the surging masses marching towards Ganabhaban. So, it doesn’t matter if she put her signature on the resignation letter or not.
Hasina’s departure from the battle to retain power without any notice was an obvious trauma to the beneficiaries of her powerful circle and activists and supporters of the governing party of 15-plus years, Awami League.
In their desperate bid to overcome such trauma, they might love to speculate that the ‘magic lady’ would anytime soon enter Bangladesh saying, like the quack of a fairytale. ‘Furung faarang faash!’ and that something magical would take place on Bangladesh soil.
Such attempt, if she really makes it, would be encouraging for her supporters and sycophants. Sheikh Hasina can also try to take up the challenge of so doing, instead of hush-hush moves, if she is confident that she did commit no killing and atrocities, no corruption whatsoever, no vote rigging, no money laundering and no activities against the interests of the country.
In that case, the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) would be able to take her to custody for interrogation, without any bargaining for bringing her back from India under the purview of the extradition treaty.
One can understand the agonies of defeat, fear and loss of paradise in Awami minds; but it is hard for the pro-revolutionary forces to show magnanimity to the adversaries who are ‘stronger than the coronavirus’. Because, by using excessive force and killing as means to survive in power, Hasina’s administration and party left no scope for peaceful power transfer and co-existence.
Had Sheikh Hasina had legitimacy as Prime Minister after the 2014 farcical elections and before the July-August 2024 movement, why did she and her party men disappeared from the public eye within moments on that day?
A popular party is expected to bring out a huge procession in support of its paramount leader and political agenda. Why did the country that has given shelter to a fleeing Hasina, felicitate either the new Chief Adviser, Nobel peace laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, who had just taken oath of office on 8 August?
Because, even Hasina’s patrons saw the marches of the millions on the streets of Dhaka, rallies of tens of thousands in each city, and celebratory processions by many more in mufassul towns and sprawling villages in the afternoon on 5 August 2024.
Those processions and gatherings of the surging masses finally the illegal rule of Hasina once and for all and that was the moment of confirming legitimacy for building a new Bangladesh, a republic.
That was the end of one phase of fascist history – period or full stop!
Let’s look back and recall if Hasina’s Awami League had an iota of respect for the people’s mandate, the party could have shown courage to face the then opposition parties including the BNP in fair electoral competition. In case it was defeated in the people’s verdict, the Awami Leaguers would have accepted the loss upholding democratic values and spirit.
Those who forget the events and facts fast should be reminded that after Hasina singlehandedly removed the election-time caretaker government system from the Constitution in 2011, her subservient Election Commission made sure that more than 50 per cent, i.e. 154 out 300 parliamentary seats were occupied without any contest and in the one-sided race for the rest of the constituencies, voter turnout was less than five per cent.
Ballot boxes were filled with ballot papers sealed with Hasina’s candidates’ symbols at dead of night before the elections scheduled for 2018, which is called the voting at night.
In the 2024 parliamentary polls boycotted by the opposition parties, more than 95 per cent people refrained from going to the polling stations, proving once again how the nature of the voting was during the Hasina regime.
Once desperate to be called the ‘daughter of democracy’, Sheikh Hasina made a constitutional arrangement based on the principle of depriving people of their right to vote!
So, before the July-August student-mass revolution, popular legitimacy of the Hasina government was below zero.
The nation cannot afford to lose the opportunity created out of the 5 August political changeover for building a better Bangladesh and working with greater purpose to ensure welfare of the people
It is those people who are questioning the constitutional legitimacy of the Yunus government and the student-mass upsurge, the legitimacy which was overridden by the forces of the revolution of the century – the masses and political activists alike – led by a new generation of youth.
Showing no remorse for cruelty and despite being defeated in the bloody revolution, Hasina’s AL men are issuing threats via social media in a clandestine manner. They are tryinig to intimidate all others that everything shall be shattered.
It is a matter of concern that rumours proved to be true eventually in most cases in Bangladesh. For instance, assumption of office by a military-controlled government that happened on 11 January 2007, and usurpation of power by the then army chief HM Ershad in 1982 were kind of open secrets in the political market.
The people of this country had to pay a lot of price for political rehabilitation of autocrat Ershad, ousted from power through the student-mass upheaval in 1990, after the 1991 elections, by suffering for repression, injustice, corruption, killing and violation of rights committed during more than one and half decades’ fascist rule of Hasina’s Awmai League supported by Ershad’s Jatiya Party.
The Awami League has never admitted its mistakes of following a fascist path, though they were crimes of serious nature, let alone seeking apology to the nation.
This time around as well, the Awami Leaguers have set their strategy of executing a scheme to condemn the Yunus government. The supporters of fascism spend their days and nights wishing ill for the country and its democracy-loving people.
Now, the pro-revulution forces need to realise that the path of building a new Bangladesh republic will not be very smooth. If the revolution is leased out for implementing its objectives, the counter-revolutionary forces might make the ‘sharecroppers’ of the revolution as the target of attack to defeat the greater causes.
No matter what the Awami League thinks about the present state of political landscape, the post-5 August Bangladesh is just not about the advisory council headed by Dr Muhammad Yunus.
The nation cannot afford to lose the opportunity created out of the 5 August political changeover for building a better Bangladesh and working with greater purpose to ensure welfare of the people; rather it is the sacred duty of the conscientious people to ensure that those who would be out to defeat the process, are brought to book.
*Khawaza Main Uddin is a journalist.