Economist:Letter from Bangladesh

Governing Bangladesh

SIR – There are many reasons for democrats to be concerned about the political turn in Bangladesh, but the loss of the caretaker government institution should not be one (“Reversion to type”, August 13th). Aid donors and other powerful outsiders have been seduced by the idea of a caretaker administration, which they see as a neat answer to the chronic problem of ruling-party election theft. But the result of the caretaker-government system has been a democratic veneer of multiparty competition that has barely covered a weakening of the institutions of democratic governance.

First, it has helped ensure that the main parties have failed to develop rules and practices of self-restraint on election competition (the Bangaldesh Nationalist Party has been particularly guilty of this), and that they continue to rely on a military-backed babysitter to force them to behave like grown-up political parties. Second, senior judges who were once deemed above politics have been increasingly drawn into party politics, for the very good reason that they run caretaker administrations and so shape election outcomes. You do not need to be an Awami Leaguer to think the caretaker-government system has outlived its purpose.

Without parties that agree to play by their own rules and courts that are above politics, the multiparty polls so beloved of aid donors are not much more than ornamental features of Bangladesh’s democracy.