How Hasina shut the door for her (safe) exit
The regime Sheikh Hasina presided over for 15 years had become a textbook example of a despotic one marked by large-scale brutalities on many levels that no other regime had perpetrated before
It was none other than Sheikh Hasina who set the first instance of a peaceful transition of power in Bangladesh after a largely peaceful tail end to her maiden term as the prime minister in July 2001.
Approximately 23 years down the line, it's none but Hasina who became the first head of the government of Bangladesh to flee the country after the fall of her regime in an uprising.
Hasina herself had led a vigorous street movement for years along with other political parties to oust the autocratic ruler Gen Ershad who grabbed state power in March 1982 by toppling the Justice Sattar government who reached the end of his road in December 1990.
In the final hours of the collapse of his regime, Gen Ershad was offered, as an adviser of the current interim govt disclosed, a blank cheque to leave Dhaka for any other country with assurance of safe exit. But Gen Ershad, according to the adviser, refused the offer and instead opted to stay in the country.
Ershad handed over power to the incumbent chief justice Shahabuddin Ahmed by appointing him first as his vice-president who would be acting as the president with his exit, to lead a makeshift government that would ensure the country's first free and fair election within two months.
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After his resignation, Gen Ershad was arrested and put behind bars, but in later years he would emerge as a 'kingmaker' in Bangladesh politics who would be joining Hasina or, in other words, he would be forced by Hasina to strengthen her hands to grab all state powers gradually.
Five years after the fall of the Ershad regime, Khaleda Zia had to concede to Hasina's demand and stepped down on 30 March 1996 by handing over power to a non-partisan caretaker government before she resigned ending the very brief life of her government formed through a one-sided election held in previous month, on 15 February.
Two other heads of the governments led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Ziaur Rahman were overthrown by assassinating them in 1975 and 1981 respectively.
But the way Hasina found the end of the road is unmatched in the country's history.
She was the leader of one of the two major political parties. She has been leading her party Awami League for more than four decades since her return to home ending her life in exile which began after the killing of her father and most of her family members on 15 August 1975.
She was privileged to take the helm of the country twice, first in 1996 and last time in 2008 elections to build her legacy, as in her own words, she often claimed "she has nothing except for the people of Bangladesh."
But the regime she presided over for 15 years has become a textbook example of a despotic one marked by large-scale brutalities on many levels that no other regime had perpetrated before.
Like other despots in different countries, she, therefore, had to flee the country by the skin of her teeth, finding no other way for a safe exit. Her despotic regime collapsed like a house of cards leaving Bangladesh in an unprecedented constitutional crisis. The party she has been leading for more than four decades is now in the biggest ever crisis with most of its leaders and workers disappearing from public life.
Why a despot flees the country
As the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely, such powers confuse despots too making them unable to determine when they need to call it a day. Has it happened to Hasina?
A mathematical model developed by Kaushik Basu, ex chief economist of the World Bank, which was published in Oxford Open Economics journal in 2023 under the title "The morphing of dictators: why dictators get worse over time" offers food for thoughts about the Hasina regime and her hasty exile.
"Dictators, even those who seize power with the intention of helping the nation, frequently morph over time into tyrants. There may be many reasons for this," Basu writes in his paper.
His model shows that the series of decisions taken over time by an authoritarian leader concerning how much political intrigue and evil to indulge in, in order to stay in power, leads to a dynamic inconsistency converting the leader into a tyrant.
"It is possible that the dictator will, eventually, come to regret this, but by then they have no exit options," comments the economist who was once widely cited after his comments about Bangladesh being an 'economic miracle' in 2018. Next year the World Economic Forum projected Bangladesh as the new "Asian Tiger".
The narrative of the "economic growth miracle" has always been mired in controversy because of unabashed data manipulation by the regime of Hasina.
Around eight months after Kaushik Basu's study was published, Branko Milanovic, who served as lead economist in the World Bank Research Department for almost 20 years, in a write up reviewed the model.
In an article "There is no exit for dictators" Branko Milanovic sums up Basu's paper. In his article, Branko discusses an old problem: How rulers, once they are in power, cannot leave it even if they wish to do so, because their road to power, and in power, is littered with corpses that will all (metaphorically) ask revenge if the ruler were to step down.
"Furthermore, since the number of misdeeds and of rulers' real or imagined enemies multiplies with each additional year in power, rulers need to resort to increasingly greater oppression to stay in power. Thus, even the originally well-meaning or tolerant rulers become, with the duration of their rule, tyrants.," writes Branko Milanovic, a Serbian-American economist, who is widely acclaimed for his works on socio- economic inequality.
He writes dictators often evolve during their rule, moving more toward the power-hungry tyrants and ideologues than they were in the beginning of their reigns, even regardless of the number of crimes they might have committed.
And more importantly there is nothing that can be offered to dictators to make them step down, he writes, adding they have to continue to rule until they either die peacefully in their beds and after death become either vilified or celebrated (or at times, both), or until they are overthrown, or meet an assassin's bullet.
"Once on the top, there is no exit. They have become prisoners like many others whom they have thrown in jail."
The reasons behind the rise of despots discussed by the two economists match with Hasina's tactics and characteristics of her regimented rule. She reached the top, but there was no exit for her.
How Hasina closed all exits
In the 1991 election held under Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed led caretaker government, Hasina and her party's top leaders were over confident that they were coming to power. But they had a rude awakening as they faced a shocking and surprising defeat to Khaleda Zia led BNP.
Hasina had to lead relentless and violent street agitations for several years to force Khaleda Zia to introduce the non-partisan caretaker government for holding free and fair elections to be held in 1996.
Prior to the June 1996 polls under Justice Habibur Rahman led caretaker government introduced in the constitution two months ago in face of strong street movement which often turned violent, Hasina emerged with a "change".
In a televised address, Hasina donning a black Islamic hijab, apologised for her party's mistakes in the past [1972-75] and instructed her workers to "beg door to door" for votes.
Seeking an apology was rare in politics. So her humility was widely appreciated. Voters forgave her and she won the election and brought her party, AL, back to power after 21 years since 1975.
A CNN report on the election day of June 12, 1996, describes another incident of Hasina with more humility.
"Donning a black Islamic cap and counting the beads of a Muslim rosary, she [Hasina] joined the end of a long queue in a Dhaka college to vote in Bangladesh's general election last week. When a group of women offered to help her jump the queue, the lady politely declined. "All voters are alike and have equal rights and privileges," she said. "Why should I receive special treatment?"
The CNN report says on June 16, in an apparent response to her party's impending victory, the caretaker government stepped up security outside Hasina's house in a posh Dhaka neighbourhood. Speaking to scores of journalists in the driveway of her home that evening, Hasina sounded every bit like a prime minister in waiting. "We want reconciliation," she said, referring to the years of bitter rivalry between her party and the BNP. "We want to heal wounds, not create new ones. We want to unite the nation, not divide it."
But Hasina could not keep her pledges "to heal wounds, not to create new ones."
The last two years of her first five-year term saw the rise of confrontational politics. Her party men often attacked BNP's processions and countered them on the streets by bringing out processions. At least two AL's MPs were seen in news photos shooting at opposition BNP's procession in the city.
Rise of the Godfathers
Local AL leaders emerged as "godfathers" in Feni, Narayanganj, Loxmipur and Mymensingh and their illegal activities such as extortion, tender manipulation, killing and torture created a reign of terror in local politics.
The motorcade of Khaleda Zia, then opposition leader who had been leading the largest ever opposition bench in the parliament, came under attack on several occasions.
All these incidents tainted the image of the Hasina government before the 2001 parliamentary election in which her party faced a humiliating defeat to the Khaleda Zia led four party alliance.
She and her party along with some other allies had to agitate on the streets for at least two years to install an acceptable person in the office of the chief advisor and the election commission to lead the interim government and the EC.
The rest was history as the armed forces had to intervene to save the country from plunging into a deeper political crisis. A state of emergency was declared suspending the 22 January 2007 election.
During the emergency regime, Hasina's political future became uncertain as she was arrested and put behind bars in connection with corruption cases.
She was however released months before the December 2008 parliamentary election.
This time around Hasina emerged with a "change" again.
She came up with an electoral manifesto she named "a charter of change" full of lofty promises to strengthen the parliament, the judiciary, stamp down corruption etc.
But winning a landslide in the election, she gradually moved away from her pledges. She started politicising every economic and political institution of the state installing individuals whose only qualification would be unquestioned loyalty.
All of a sudden, she abolished the non-partisan caretaker government, clearing the way for her to stay in power during the general elections by manipulating the election process. And she did it efficiently by holding three stage managed elections in 2014, 2018 and 2024 using the state apparatus manned by her minions as tools to cling to power. She reached the peak emerging as an all-powerful and unquestionable leader of her party in the country.
The deeply politicised and partisan law enforcement agencies were blatantly abused to crush the opposition movements agitating for free and fair elections to be held under non-partisan government. Extrajudicial killings, rampant incidents of human rights violation and enforced disappearances, corruption, looting of banks in the name of taking loans, an obsequious judiciary and abuse of draconian laws to gag dissenting voices were among the salient features of her 15 years regimented rule. She put her arch rival Khaleda Zia in jail in February 2018, months before the polls.
What economists Kaushik Basu and Branko Milanovic discussed about the traits of a dictator perfectly matches with Hasina.
And only in August when her regime failed to survive by crushing the student protests by using excessive force, killing more than 1000 and maiming several more thousands, imposing curfew and deployment of the army, Hasina found no other alternative but to resign and flee the country for India as Economist Branko Milanovic said once a despot reached on the top, there was no exit.
'Birth of autocracy in Bangladesh': Excerpts from Hasina's book
When Hasina was leader of the opposition in the parliament in 1993, she published a book "Birth of autocracy in Bangladesh" in which she described five "heinous deeds" done by Ziaur Rahman and HM Ershad to "legitimise" their unlawful takeover of the state powers.
She wrote that Gen Zia and Gen Ershad adopted various processes to rig the elections by denying people' fundamental rights and playing ducks and drakes with people's voting rights. They destroyed politics with widespread corruption and black money in politics. They split the parties with money.
Filing 'false' cases to harass opposition leaders and activists, putting them behind bars and inflicting torture on them were the tools of autocracy, Hasina wrote.
It's ironic that her 15 years of despotic rule was marked by more than all those "heinous" deeds that she accused the past two presidents of in her book as reasons for the birth of autocracy in Bangladesh.
Where do ousted despots go?
Seven years ago an article titled "Where do ousted dictators go? Fewer countries now offer a warm welcome" which was published by the Washington Post, disclosed interesting information about global despots.
Daniel Krcmaric, then an assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University, and Abel Escribà-Folch, then an associate professor of political and social sciences at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain, co-authored the article based on a study they did.
They collected data on the destinations of all dictators going into exile since 1946 which showed that 52 different countries have hosted at least one dictator.
The leading exile destinations they found were the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Argentina, and France, said the article published in January 2017.
Before the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, exile has often been a useful policy tool that international actors use to ease "bad" leaders out of power.
They cited some examples.
The United States flew Filipino leader Ferdinand Marcos to a luxurious exile in Hawaii to avoid a massive crackdown on protesters after a rigged election in 1986.
That same year, they said, French and American diplomats convinced Haiti's corrupt and violent leader Jean-Claude Duvalier to give up power in exchange for exile on the French Riviera.
Similar stories exist for leaders like Uganda's Idi Amin (exile in Saudi Arabia), Zaire's Mobutu Sese Soku (exile in Morocco), Liberia's Charles Taylor (exile in Nigeria), and many others, they wrote.
They came up with an interesting observation: An overwhelming number of dictators in the developing world sought exile in their country's former coloniser.
But the end of the Cold War removed incentives for the superpowers to host ousted rulers from around the globe.
Before Sheikh Hasina fled the country, the embattled Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his country in July 2022 in the face of protest fueled by economic and political crisis.
The new government formed after his exit has managed the crisis efficiently resulting in Rajapaksa's return to home from Dubai in January next year as his regime was not marked by too much brutalities.
But for Hasina, whose regime was marked by widespread and unchecked state brutalities, a return to home ending a life in exile will remain elusive as her despotic regime shut that door too.
