Last weekend, the long-ruling Bangladesh Awami League scored a major electoral “victory,” winning 222 seats out of a total of 298 available, according to the country’s Election Commission, which includes many officials of the Awami League. Sheikh Hasina, her fourth consecutive term and fifth in total as prime minister.
Unfortunately, during Sheikh Hasina’s tenure, it increasingly repressed opposition parties, civil society, the press, and virtually all forms of opposition. The main opposition party, the BNP, refused to participate in the elections, saying they would not. Be flexible or fair. They were right. Sheikh Hasina refused to allow an interim government to take over the electoral period. In the past, caretaker governments have allowed for more flexible and fair electoral crusades and helped save the ruling party from dominating the electoral apparatus and process. Tens of thousands of BNP members are detained and several have been killed. According to The Guardian, “the elections were described as a ‘farce’ designed to consolidate Hasina’s strength through exiled opposition leader Tarique Rahman. Rahman’s party staged a months-long protest campaign in 2023 to call for the resignation of the prime minister, which has seen at least 11 other people killed and thousands of his supporters arrested.
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Major democracies claimed that the elections had not been relaxed or fair. The U. K. condemned it for being lax and, according to Reuters, a U. S. State Department spokesperson said. said: “The U. S. remains implicated through the arrest of thousands of members of the political opposition and reports of irregularities on election day. . . The United States shares this view. Along with other observers, those elections were neither relaxed nor fair, and we know that not all parties participated. “
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Sheikh Hasina’s movements are part of a persistent and enduring trend of democratic regression in South and Southeast Asia. This trend encompasses military force appropriations and autocracies without an army or hybrid states that have eliminated democracy, or at least some degree of freedom. Even brilliant countries like Thailand, which at least had elections last year, in the end opposed the will of the others and ended up installing a coalition government that did not come with the component that got the maximum votes.
There is little reason to hope that things will turn around, at least anytime soon, in the region. Democratic regression could worsen. Indonesia’s presidential elections are coming up, and Prabowo Subianto, the leading candidate, has previously suggested that he would rule as a strongman-type leader. In Cambodia, new leader Hun Manet may be more open to economic change but continues the repressive environment toward political opposition and civil society. With the United States distracted and China increasingly influential in the region, democrats face an uphill battle.