As Bangladesh marks 50 years of independence, the country has yet to establish itself as a substantive democracy. According to a news report published in a national daily on Monday, the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute based in Sweden in its fifth annual democracy report has categorized Bangladesh as an “electoral autocracy”, citing “muzzling of the media and overuse of digital security laws.”
The state of democracy in the country has worsened significantly over the last 10 years. Bangladesh stood 154th among 179 countries in Liberal Democracy Index, according to Democracy Report- 2021 of the Institute. Bangladesh is fourth among its neighbours – Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka – in terms of autocritisation.
While India’s score as a democracy was at an all-time high in 2013, it declined by the end of 2020. It now stands first among its neighbours as an “electoral autocracy”. Most of the decline occurred following BJP’s victory in 2014 and because of their Hindu nationalist agenda, says the report. Denmark has secured the top position in the index as a stable democratic country.
The report, which compared the status of democracy between 2010 and 2020, describes Bangladesh as an “Autocratising country”. The V-Dem’s report is based on a dataset on democracy with almost 30 million data points for 202 countries from 1789 to 2020, involving over 3,500 scholars and other country experts.
Not only the V-Dem Institute but also other organisations like the US-based think-tank Freedom House have censured Bangladesh’s government for denial of democracy. In its 2020 annual report on democracy, it mentioned that the government had “consolidated political power through sustained harassment of the opposition and those perceived to be allied with it.” There has been many arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture and extra-judicial killings in recent years. Thousands of cases have been filed against opponent leaders, and activists, keeping many of them on the run or behind the bars.
The police power as against the people power is the system of government we have got in Bangladesh freed by Indian war with Pakistan. Our many years of struggle for democracy has gone in vein. Under President Trump of the United States gun-power autocracy got encouragement. Russia and China entered other countries to influence their gun-power politics. The free world must help democracy to grow in other countries than trying to make communist countries democratic. Communism is an anti-democracy ideology and cannot be as democratic.
Without restoration of fair election our rating as a democracy will never improve.
