Do we love strong rulers aka military dicattors? One of the new breed of smart journalists, Zahid Newaz Khan of Channel I, on his Facebook page, asked if someone would come forward to conduct a research to test this hypothesis: Do we, as an ethnic group, love strong rulers aka military dictators? This is not a research but a record of my spontaneous thoughts on the question. Zahid Newaz Khan recalls on this anniversary of the scandalous 1/11 the joy of one of his colleagues on the news of the takeover by General Moyeen and his gang. My response was the following: Interesting point! Our ethnicity may not be responsible for this. I know there are nations and groups of people who love strong rulers but I do not know one that loves dictators! The trouble with our military rulers and for most in history is that most of them turned out to be ruthless dictators and are known not for their strength in governing but the strength in oppressing their peoples. Because strength comes with the baggage of ruthlessness, corruption, torture, nepotism, arrogance, and general lack of knowledge of governance, most military rulers in history actually failed to leave any lasting legacy. Even Kemal Ataturk is unpopular in modern Turkey. And we all know of what happened to Saddam Hussain, Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak and how popular Bashar Al Assad or General Bashir are. In his famous book Military withdrawal from politics: A comparative study, Talukder Maniruzzaman looked at military regimes, their interventions and eventual return to barracks in 57 countries. On nearly each occasion, people appear to welcome military intervention. People welcome them because performance of civil governments is often so miserable that the people see no hope of anything ever changing for the better! So they look for a devine intervention. And on various occasions in history, military dictators emerge as the saviour, as the Messiah, and ordinary people heap a sigh of relief. Ironically, this euphoria later forms the basis of resentment against these rulers as the expectation gap soon emerges and military has to experience often humiliating return to barracks. Human beings are naturally created as liberty seekers, with ego, opinion, conscience, self-esteem. So genetically people love to decide their own destinies. Therefore, there is no reason for a large number of people to want military rule. Why, then, we see sighs of relief, welcome messages, or a general tendency of praying for martial laws in our country? This is a puzzle. And the answer is not in our gene or ethnicity. The answer lies in human beings natural frustration with status quo when status quo miserably fails to deliver. When nothing seems to work and tyrants refuse ti budge, people seek help from the invisible hand of God and military emerges as a godsend. Examples of this can be found in post-famine (1974) Bangladesh and definitely after the 4th amendment and to some extent, in 2006 when there was this standoff between the BNP and the AL. You can also see reliefs in Pakistan prior to Zia-ul-Haqs and Parvez Musharrafs takeover but not as much prior to the other takeovers such as that of Iskandar Mirzas, Ayub Khans or Yeahyas. Likewise, in Bangladesh we had several military takeovers and none was as popular as the one by Ziaur Rahman. Why? In spite of Awami Leagues tacit acceptance, the military takeover by General Ershad never made any ground among the people and the one by Moyeen Uddin and Fakhruddin, the one notoriously known as one-eleven, was clearly endorsed by the Awami League (See the then AL Secretary General Abdul Jalils interview where he admitted that he received calls prior to the intervention) and thats why survived for as long as they did. Note that in spite of noticeable infrastructural development delivered by Ayub Khan (the so-called decade of development) and General Ershad, neither could make any head way politically. The whole time Ayub Khan was in power, he had to fight for acceptance. The same happened to Mr Ershad and Moyeen-Fakhr never had any ground under their feet. They survived the 2 years because the AL allowed them to survive as the AL knew they were delivering the goods. I rather see a different phenomenon in the anthropology of our people. In the last 56 years since the 1958 martial law, our people have relentlessly fought against the army. The only popular military dictator whose legacy survived years after death is Ziaur Rahman. You can test no one else - Ayub, Yahya, Tikka, Zia Ul Haq, Mosharraf, Ziaur Rahman, Ershad, Moyeen - all these generals could be credited with martial laws but whose party even won one free and fair election in their absence? None but Zias!! This puts Ziaur Rahman in a league of his own. Doesnt it? [Dear Zahid Bhaiya, I am posting this comment on my page too. I hope its okay.]
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 04:15:50 +0000