Elections 2024…Bangladesh, Congo, Taiwan

Bangladesh confirms an autocrat as democracy goes up in flames….Congo cements a dynasty….Taiwan heads into the home stretch with the world watching

Continuing our pledge at Andelman Unleashed to report and comment on every national election everywhere in the world, this week we have three dramatic turns of events.  

Bangladesh: democracy in flames

The train explosion on the lead up to the effective coronation of Bangladesh's autocratic prime minister for a fifth four-year term only allowed Sheikh Hasina, the world's longest-serving female head of government, to crack down on the nation's vibrant opposition.

Seven opposition figures were arrested and charged with arson after the blaze that left four dead and eight injured on a packed commuter train. It was only one of a host of moves against the prime minister’s foes that saw the nation's 83-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus charged with labor laws violations.

The result was a boycott of the vote by leading opposition politicians that led officially to barely a 40% turnout, half the number who voted five years ago. “It’s hard to believe the turnout was 40%, especially given the fact that the chief election commissioner himself uttered 28% first while briefing the media and then changed it to 40% all of a sudden,” Sakhawat Hossain, a former election commissioner, told Al Jazeera. Indeed, an hour before the polls officially closed, the official turnout posted by the Election Commission was 27%. Al Jazeera said its reporters had "visited at least 10 polling stations across the capital Dhaka in the last hour and did not see any voters."

Still, the final results were never in doubt—Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League party seizing control of 222 of the 298 seats in parliament.

Not that the opposition is going to retreat into silence. The morning after, thousands took to the streets for a mass Black Flag March  to protest what their banner proclaimed as "the killing of democracy through farcical elections."

On Monday, the State Department issued a sharply worded statement noting:

The United States remains concerned by the arrests of thousands of political opposition members and by reports of irregularities on elections day. The United States shares the view with other observers that these elections were not free or fair and we regret that not all parties participated. The United States condemns violence that took place during elections and in the months leading up to it.

When she leaves office after her fifth term, Sheikh Hasina, then 79 years old, will have served 25 years over two stretches, continuously since 2009.

During her term, on the one hand there has been dramatic economic expansion and growth—more than 7% growth in 2022, virtually identical with neighboring India, more than 50% higher than in Pakistan, and more than double China's. Indeed, the government has succeeded in attracting a number of foreign manufacturers, especially in the garment trade, that have fled China. Its per capita income of $6,840 surpassed both India and Pakistan.

All this has come at a price. Human Rights Watch reported in November that it had "found evidence that security forces are responsible for using excessive force, mass arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial killings."

Indeed, the question is whether the government succeeded in luring foreign manufacturers at the expense of its human rights record. "The United States condemns recent violence against workers in Bangladesh protesting over the minimum wage, as well as the criminalization of legitimate worker and trade union activities," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said late last year. "We are also concerned about the ongoing repression of workers and trade unionists. We call on the government of Bangladesh to protect workers’ right to peaceful protest and investigate allegations of false criminal charges against workers and labor leaders."

In the end, the country still seems unable to escape the violence and sketchy rule by the two parties, each with deep roots either in the military or extrajudicial forces. Sheikh Hasani's father, the nation's founding prime minister was himself assassinated, in a coup that I covered for The New York Times in August 1975.

The new foreign minister Abu Sayeec Chowdhury told me in an interview at the time that the prime minister, Sheik Mujibur Rahman, had been assassinated together with much of his family as they slept in their home on the outskirts of Dacca, because “he was unable to provide for the needs of the people, and toward the end his regime took the clear shape of one‐man rule." Like father, like daughter?

Congo: More one man rule?

The largest nation in sub-Saharan Africa, with a territory larger than the entirety of Western Europe, the Democratic Republic of Congo serves as the continent's center of gravity, indeed its fulcrum. Still, when President Félix Tshisekedi was re-elected last month in a landslide, the vote did not suggest anything more than a corrupt extension of one-man rule.

Indeed, the entire opposition called the vote a "sham" and demanded a rerun. Don't hold your breath. Instead, out of 101,000 who stood for election, three ministers and four governors were among 82 candidates excluded from parliamentary provincial and local office after the balloting, and with no explanation. Martin Fayulu, who came in a distant third in the presidential contest, told the BBC "by what magic... only the legislative elections were corrupted and not the presidential one?"

The official turnout was barely 43%, but Tshisekedi racked up a landslide 73% of those who did show up to vote. His nearest challenger, Moise Katumbi, a wealthy mining figure and former provincial governor won 18%, with Fayulu, a former oil industry figure registered 5%. Some two dozen other presidential candidates including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Denis Mukwege divided less than 1% of the total.

The vote hardly seems likely to bring any real stability to a nation that has been plagued by turmoil and unrest often intensifying after previously sketchy political contests. The nation produces some 70% of the world's cobalt—essential to electric vehicles and a host of other applications—and has the world's second largest carbon-absorbing rain forests as well as a host of other natural and mineral wealth, whose spoils are often as contested as the elections that determine who will control or profit from them.

The results of the last electoral contest five years ago continue to fester. At the time, results compiled by outside monitors suggested Fayulu had actually won at least three times the vote of Tshisekedi. But Tshisekedi cobbled together a deal with Joseph Kabila, the outgoing despot who'd ruled for 18 years, that the two could share power—an arrangement blessed at the time by the Trump administration. That fell apart in a year, and today the U.S. has declared a determined hands-off policy. But now, Tshisekedi has consolidated his hold, though he's failed to fulfill either of his two promises—bring an end to corruption, which remains rampant and allowed him to achieve his win this time, and bring peace to the vast eastern reaches of Congo.

Since 1996 a violent and unchecked rebellion has raged at the hands of more than 120 militia groups, some like the virulent M23 far more powerful than government forces. Now, it seems unlikely Tshisekedi will be in a position, or indeed have much incentive, to take on either of these challenges.

Taiwan: Challenges galore

Taiwan has entered the homestretch of its election coming Saturday that is the focus of attention for much of the world, preoccupied with the powerful forces balanced on a knife edge between peace and war. The results Saturday could very much tilt this balance. For the past eight years, this island nation barely 100 miles off the communist Chinese mainland has been led by a most redoubtable woman, Tsai Ing-wen.

Now, under the constitution, she is ineligible for a new, third term. And China could not be happier—unless her spiritual heir manages to eke out the victory that the odds and the latest polls suggest are tilting in his favor.

As The Economist notes in a footnote to its latest aggregate polling, no opinion polls can be published in Taiwan for the last ten days before the vote. So, as of January 3 the numbers are frozen in aspic, but suggest a somewhat clear trend.

For the entire stretch of the campaign, Lai Ching-Te of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has maintained a healthy lead over his two challengers, though in recent months it has narrowed. Now serving as Taiwan's vice president, he has held virtually every office on the island worth holding except president.

Lai has pledged to maintain the approach of his predecessor toward what is really the only issue worth considering in this whole contest. Taiwan is effectively independent of China and will defend the status quo however hard it may be pressed. Moreover, the current administration holds, since this is a given, no more discussion is required. This is not the view from Beijing of course. There, Xi Jinping believes the whole island and its 24 million people are an integral part of his nation and must be brought definitively into its embrace—by force if necessary.

A different perspective comes from Lai’s close second in this three-way contest. Hou Yu-Ih of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), wants to begin talking with Beijing. A distant third, Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and former mayor of Taipei, offers a middle ground closer to conciliation. There have been suggestions that Ko could also summon a bloc of votes from Taiwan's disaffected youth who are more concerned about housing, college debt, and inflation. In November, talks between the two moderates about uniting behind one of them broke down and with it came a blow to warmer relations across the straits. Had the two been able to agree to join forces, the numbers seem to suggest one of the challengers might have been able to overtake Lai.

If voters go with the status quo, expect Beijing to ratchet up the pressure. “A choice between war and peace,” was the official Chinese response, after unity talks between the opposition parties broke down in November.

Not an entirely disinterested party, the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, which for decades sought to maintain a distance from Beijing after British rule was withdrawn—and failed—suggested this week that Beijing itself might be torn over how to respond:

As Beijing braces for a possible victory by another independence-leaning president in Taiwan’s January 13 election, it faces a fundamental dilemma: how to show its grave displeasure at what it sees as a dangerous drift towards Taiwanese national sovereignty without tipping the region into war.

Each time Beijing has decided a “red line” is crossed, it has upped the ante. It has tried bluster, threats, missiles, fighter jets, charm offensives, temporary blockades, trade restrictions and cyber campaigns.

Meanwhile, the mainland has been sending some mixed signals—carrots, shall we say, and sticks. Four days before voting begins, Beijing released a glowing report on the beauty inherent in its plan for economic integration of Taiwan’s islands of Quemoy and Matsu—barely six miles from the mainland and conflict zones dating back to 1958 during the Eisenhower administration—with the vastly developed mainland province of Fujian, one of China’s most affluent regions.

At the same time, China has been launching waves of balloons of the type it floated, quite threateningly, across the United States to float across the straits and across Taiwan—a signal perhaps to Taiwanese voters. It would appear that China may also be maneuvering its military into a position at least to suggest a challenge to Taiwan and especially the United States. Just last month, Xi sacked his defense minister and at least nine senior generals—many of them in the Rocket Force that would be the front lines of any battle over Taiwan. Moreover, the new defense minister for the first time comes from the ranks of China's navy.

The stakes are certainly high. Stand by.