Sheikh Hasina, the eternal leader of Bangladesh ousted due to her authoritarian drift

Sheikh Hasina has been elected prime minister five times in Bangladesh, the eighth-most populous country in the world with 170 million inhabitants. With the 76-year-old at the helm, the center-left Awami League first came to power in 1996 and, in two separate terms, ruled for 20 years. She became the hope for a democratic Bangladesh after a turbulent period of war and military coups.

After her first term as prime minister, from 1996 to 2001, she spent several years in the opposition and was singled out for her closeness to the Indian government. Since 2009, she has won four consecutive victories, the most recent one in January 2024. Power was given to her by the ballot boxes, the international community praised the country’s enormous progress, she was awarded prizes for her policies in favor of women... But her detractors accuse her of eventually believing that power was hers alone and of developing an authoritarian administration that did not permit criticism or opposition.

The violent containment of student protests in recent weeks, in which more than 300 people have been killed and thousands injured and arrested, hastened the end of Hasina’s government on August 5, drawing a line under a period of increasing repression against any voice that dared to oppose her leadership.

The reign of the longest-serving leader in Bangladesh’s young democracy came to an end with no more noise than the helicopter she boarded to flee to India, without addressing the citizens who took to the streets to celebrate the moment. It is not the first time that the former prime minister has left the country, nor is it the first time she has ended up in India or in asylum in the United Kingdom, where she is now considering returning, although her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, states that this time she is leaving with no intention to return; or at least not to return to politics.

Hasina is the eldest of five siblings, daughter of the man who is considered the father of the nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who in 1971 declared the independence of Bangladesh, which until then had been a territory of Pakistan. Sheikh Rahman became the first head of the new state and the leader of the Awami League. The charismatic leader was assassinated during a military coup on August 15, 1975, along with his wife and three sons. The only survivors were Hasina and her sister Rehana, who were residing in Germany at the time.

After the murder of her family, Hasina moved to the United Kingdom and was elected president of the Awami League in 1981, when she returned to Bangladesh with the intention of overthrowing the autocratic regime. She succeeded in doing so through an unexpected alliance with her political rival Khaleda Zia, leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Together they led a popular uprising for democracy that overthrew the military ruler Hossain Mohammad Ershad in 1990.

Gradually, however, her critics accused her of transforming herself into what she had previously fought against. She clung to power and her then-ally became an enemy. Khaleda Zia was charged with corruption in 2018 and imprisoned until the current uprisings, during which she has been released.

Bangladesh’s “strong growth and development trajectory” during Hasina’s tenures, according to a World Bank analysis in April, has been accompanied and overshadowed by continued complaints from human rights organizations, the opposition, and civil society in the country over the authoritarian drift of her governments.

The violent repression of the student demonstrations of the last few weeks is one more chapter — the latest and bloodiest — in a string of outrages. The use of excessive force to contain protests was common and dissenting voices faced extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, or imprisonment in a country where the death penalty is still in place, according to Amnesty International in its latest assessment of Bangladesh for the period 2018-2023.

Hasina had the data on her side to boast about her stewardship. Bangladesh moved off the list of the least-developed countries in the world to reach the lower-middle income level in 2015. Extreme poverty (living on less than $2.15 a day) fell from 11.8% in 2010 to 5% in 2022. Similarly, notes the World Bank, moderate poverty (less than $3.65 a day) declined from 49.6% to 30.0% over the same period. Gross domestic product grew by an average of 6% per year. “Human development outcomes improved in many dimensions, including reductions in child mortality and stunting, and increases in literacy rates and access to electricity,” the agency asserts.

In December 2023, Forbes magazine ranked Hasina 46th among the world’s 100 most powerful women. But instead of focusing on extolling her achievements, Hasina became obsessed with silencing critics and eliminating any opposition. And in July 2024, that exercise of force and repression against any hint of dissent got out of hand. Half a century after the loss that marked her political career, her exile and rise, it was precisely the social rejection of the civil service quota system, which reserved 30% of government jobs for relatives of fighters in the war of liberation against Pakistan that her father championed, that triggered her final downfall.

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