Staff Reporter:
Sajeeb Wazed Joy, son of ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, has told the TIME magazine that no decision has been made on her mother returning to Bangladesh for taking part in the next national elections.
Joy made the claim in an interview published by the US-based outlet on Thursday.
Observers quoted by the TIME article are less confident of Bangladeshi people supporting Hasina’s return. After all, across Bangladeshi society, statues of Sheikh Mujib have been toppled, posters of Hasina defaced and replaced by lurid graffiti decrying her as a dictator. “That’s how Sheikh Hasina’s legacy is being imagined among the young population,” says Mubashar.
However, if the present unrest and paralysis continue in Bangladesh, a beleaguered populace may look more fondly at Hasina’s record.
Bangladesh was the Asia-Pacific’s fastest growing economy over the past decade, with GDP rising from $71 billion in 2006 to $460 billion in 2022 (even if inequality and political repression equally soared).
The fear for reformists is that the latter fades in memory. A return for Hasina “is quite credible,” says Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center. “If you look at the history of dynastic politics in South Asia, you can never rule out dynastic parties even when they appear to be down and out.”
Almost all analysts agree that dysfunction in the interim government would considerably boost her chances. “There is no way for Sheikh Hasina and her party to play any significant overt role in Bangladeshi politics for the next decade,” says Zillur Rahman, the executive director of the Dhaka-based Centre for Governance Studies think tank and a talk show host. “This, of course, could change if the interim government fails monumentally.”
Indeed, a politicized bureaucracy is trying every trick in the book to stymie reforms, says Shahidul Haque, a retired Bangladesh Army major-general, ambassador, and defense attaché. “They are trying to destabilize this government,” he says. “And if no visible improvements happen people are going to lose patience.”
Joy is counting on it. “If they want to run the country for a year or 18 months, actually I believe that’s perfect,” he says, pointing to today’s “lawlessness” with “the mob, the protesters, basically on a rampage.”
