Bush's Democracy Project in Bangladesh and Nepal
    By J. Sri Raman
    t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

    Tuesday 13 March 2007

    Who says that President George Bush and his men and women promote democracy only by destructive wars? They do so also through creative, unconventional diplomacy. Look at their latest achievements in Bangladesh and Nepal.

    In both these countries bordering India, whose ruling establishment has enlisted in the Bush crusade to save democracy (especially "emerging" democracies), the cause has hit a major roadblock. And it is representatives of Washington who have placed a mega-sized boulder on the path to much-awaited elections in both cases.

    In the case of Nepal, Bush's mouthpieces have not really bothered to conceal this. In the case of Bangladesh, Washington and its Western allies have only declared a more devious war on democracy.

    In talking of Nepal, these columns have repeatedly noted striking instances of the distinguished style of US Ambassador James Francis Moriarty's diplomacy, through the entire period since the people of the Himalayan state overthrew a hated monarchy and opened the door to democracy. A higher official of the US administration has now outdone him.

    Moriarty has tried many tricks barred by the book of diplomacy in a bid to prevent the return of Maoists to the political mainstream, and to break the historic accord between them and the Seven-Party Alliance (SPA) that ended King Gyanendra's despotic rule last April. Moriarty has played a role in keeping Washington's "terror tag" on the Maoists. While insisting on their electoral insignificance, he has tried to stall their inclusion in the interim government by warning of US assistance only to departments under non-Maoist ministers.

    He has also made a very un-diplomat-like visit to a center of ethnic unrest and voiced support for the demands of the Madhesi minority, which the Maoists and the SPA do not oppose anyway.

    Notwithstanding Moriarty, Nepal was to move ahead to the next stage of its democratic transition on March 14th, when the Maoists were to join the interim government under Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala. US Under Secretary of State for Management Henrietta H. Fore, on a visit to Kathmandu last week, ensured that progress in the process was put off.

    On March 10th, she proclaimed Washington's displeasure with "two trends that, if unresolved, threaten Nepal's democratic progress." The first - surprise, surprise - was "the continuing failure of the Maoists to renounce violence". The second, equally predictably, was ethnic unrest. This, she said showed the need for "inclusiveness" in Nepal, though the Maoists were to be excluded.

    She followed up that critique with a call on the aging and ailing prime minister. The outcome was, again, predictable. Koirala announced that the Maoists could not enter the interim government until they "return all the people's property they had seized and account for all their weapons." The moment Fore left Nepal, Koirala hastened to assure the offended Maoists that they would be inducted into the government "shortly."

    The damage, however, was not totally undone. Maoist leader Prachanda has now threatened street protests if the interim government is not expanded by the end of March. More scarily, he has alleged a "conspiracy" by the "pro-palace" camp to assassinate Americans in Nepal, blame it on the Maoists, and seek a ban on them.

    It is significant that some knowledgeable observers in Kathmandu think that the Nepal situation may lead to a "Bangladesh-type" solution. What they mean is not a declared military rule, but a military-backed dispensation that will keep out the Maoists and parties ready to make up with them. This will be a "democracy" that Moriarty and Fore will not disapprove of.

    This is also the kind of "democracy" in Bangladesh of which Washington and its Western allies do not disapprove. This has become evident in the two months of rapid events since the general election originally scheduled for January 22 was scrapped.

    The opposition led by the Awami League of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, of course, wanted the elections scrapped; it feared massive poll-rigging under the caretaker regime of President Iajuddin Ahmad, who is known to be close to the right-wing Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of Hasina's rival and former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia. Both parties extended support to the caretaker government of Fakhruddin Ahmed, sworn in on January 13th.

    Not many, however, foresaw two developments that followed. Fakhruddin Ahmed's regime soon turned out to be only the front of the Bangladesh army with a history of frequent political interventions. The public can only speculate about the identity of the faceless, string-pulling military rulers. But, like several other "benevolent" military regimes in the past, this one too has started off with a series of measures aimed at the heart of the middle class. An alleged crusade against corruption and for a new "political culture" has followed, with the prospect of polls receding rapidly in the process.

    The process gathered momentum with the arrest of Begum Zia's unpopular son Tarique Rahman and raids on Hasina's residence on March 8th. The very next day, all political activity (including indoor meetings) was banned.

    The second development is the entry into politics of eminent economist Mohammad Yunus. He has turned out to be a typical candidate of the same political camp and constituency that the behind-the-scene military rulers represent and back. Even more significant is the extra-Bangladesh dimension of his electoral appeal and that of his hastily assembled party called Nagorik Shakti (Citizen Power).

    Moriarty and Fore have played politics in Nepal, but their counterparts in Bangladesh would seem to have gone a step further by fielding their own candidate and a party in the forthcoming election, if and when it is held.

    The US ambassador in Bangladesh, Patricia Butien, has been more circumspect than Moriarty. But a former US ambassador in Bangladesh (and Pakistan ) and currently an academic at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, William B. Milam, has nearly given the game away.

    Milam's proximity to the power centre in Washington is seen in the fact that he was to be a US observer of the scrapped election of January 22nd. On January 9th, almost two weeks before that, he wrote in a newspaper column, "My trip to Bangladesh ... is off." He said "the US and EU have ruled out sending teams (of observers)" because, among other reasons, it "would convey an unofficial sanction to an election that will be clearly wanting in legitimacy."

    The US and the Western governments, however, have not only supported the "clean-up" drive of the Fakhruddin Ahmed regime. They have also kept mum, not mysteriously so perhaps, about the eloquent silence of the caretaker regime about the election plans.

    Milam goes further. In a subsequent column, he derides the united demand of Hasina and Zia for an announcement of the election date and asks why they call for early polls. "Could it be that they suspect that the longer an election is delayed, and the more time given to a new third party to develop a platform and make itself known, the weaker are their prospects in that election? Do their interests converge again on a single point: the need to forestall the growth and development of a new party that might take the centre of politics away from them?"

    He also notes, approvingly, that "the announcement the other day by the chief of the caretaker government that it could not yet set an election date gives Yunus and his organizers more time to pull it all together." Of what his candidate can do, if elected, he says: "(That) depends on how well the caretaker government does its job in cleaning up the political culture so that reformers like Yunus will have a chance to make a difference."

    All this, however, can only produce a system that is very different from democracy as the people in Bangladesh or elsewhere understand it.