What does it mean to grow up in the shadows of the Ershad regime? It’s just living in a dark age that changed Bangladesh for the worse, says a political analyst based in Dhaka.
The dictator is gone, but the legacy General Hussain Muhammad Ershad has left behind will continue to influence Bangladesh politics for many decades to come. He will be judged for a deadly mix of religion-peddling and gun-toting, carefully designed to tighten his grip on power. That set the future course of politics in Bangladesh.
The death of Ershad at the age of 90 on July 14 brought down the curtains on a long life reviled by many and revered by his legions of supporters in his stronghold in northern Bangladesh. Immediately after his death, his burial place was designated in a military graveyard in Dhaka, about 300 km from his hometown of Rangpur. In a dramatic turn of events, his supporters forced his family and party to change their decision to bury him in the capital. He was later laid to rest with full state honours at his ancestral home in Rangpur. “Ershad’s popularity among his voters indicates that every dictator has an enclave of support. He was a man of means to them,” said Mohammad Tanzimuddin Khan, a teacher of international relations at Dhaka University.
Brute force
In his desperate endeavour to hold on to his position, Ershad leveraged the brute force of local ward commissioners, armed hooligans and thugs, according to Mr. Khan. He still remembers the day his classmate showed him a pistol, a new-found weapon given by his friend’s “big brother”. “Those memories are still deep in my mind and don’t help me have a better picture of Ershad,” said Mr. Khan, who was then a school student in Mohammadpur, Dhaka.
A former Army chief, Gen. Ershad took over the state power in a bloodless coup in 1982. He declared himself the chief martial law administrator, suspending the Constitution and dissolving Parliament and the Council of Ministers appointed by figurehead President Abdus Sattar. Gen. Ershad ran the country with enormous power until he was forced to step down in a pro-democracy movement in 1990. Sheikh Hasina, the current Prime Minister, and her supporters led the campaign, along with Khaleda Zia, chief of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), against the man who once seemed unassailable.
Despite being imprisoned subsequently on several charges, Gen. Ershad later emerged as a powerful leader after his Jatiya Party became the country’s third largest political outfit. His election-time allegiance to either of the two major political parties — the Awami League and the BNP — was a routine subject of discussion in the media. His last political title was that of the leader of the Opposition in Parliament.
In the days since his fall, he battled a barrage of court cases and moved past all of them but one — the murder of Major General Abul Manzoor in 1981. Ershad, who was the Army chief during the murder of Maj. Gen. Manzoor, pleaded not guilty. “No one is as unfortunate as I am. No one has suffered more than me for my party,” Gen. Ershad said at an event in 2018.
Gen. Ershad’s legacy has found its way into modern-day politics. “Our leaders should have rejected his legacy. It’s unfortunate that the major parties failed to free themselves of the culture he established in Bangladesh. Politics now completely hinges on a structure built with muscle power and mindless hooliganism,” Mr. Khan said.
The ruling Awami League brought Ershad into the fold in the final years of his life, just as the BNP used the Jamaat-e-Islami to boost its political fire-power. “This political strategy is devoid of ethics, a culture that disenchanted a whole new generation,” Mr. Khan said.
Now, with the political actor’s exit from the stage, a question emerges: will his party survive without him? There’s uncertainty on the horizon.
In his political career, Gen. Ershad triumphed by his sheer force of personality. His party had never reigned supreme. Mr. Khan says the future of the party depends on whether the new leaders hold financial resources and means to keep the party up and running. The Jatiya Party, as it appears, will flounder in the days to come.
Arun Devnath is a journalist based in Dhaka.
