Sheikh Hasina: Longest Serving Female Prime Minister

Sheikh Hasina Wazed and her party the Awami League (AL) has won the national elections of Bangladesh for the fourth consecutive term in office as Prime Minister. This has made her the longest serving female head of government in the world and the longest serving Bangladeshi Prime Minister. She has been in this post since 2009. This is the fifth victory for the AL. The main opposition party of Bangladesh, the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) headed by Khalida Zia, boycotted the elections and created a void in the country for a strong opposition to contest Hasina. Both Hasina and Zia had actually joined hands against the autocratic regime of Hussain Muhammad Ershad and were key in bringing that regime to an end. Since then, there has been a tussle between these two leaders of Bangladesh with their parties AL and BNP opposing each other. 

Low turnout

Now among accusation of curtailing the freedom of speech and involvement in undemocratic practices by the citizens of Bangladesh, Hasina has emerged to be a powerful leader of one of the most densely populated countries in the world. According to the Election Commissioner of Bangladesh, the voter turnout was very low. Only 40 per cent voters of the eligible 120 million eligible voters turned out to cast their votes. Bangladesh has a population of 170 million people.  

Sheikh Hasina is the daughter of the founding father and first Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. On August 15, 1975 after about four years of having led Bangladesh to independence from Pakistan, Mujibur Rahman was assassinated along with a majority of his family. Sheikh Hasina escaped this assassination as she had gone to meet her husband, who was a Bangladeshi physicist, writer and chairman of the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission, in Germany. After that she was in exile in India for a period of six years where she lived by hiding her identity. 

Later, as leader of the opposition on August 21, 2004 a grenade attack on the Awami League gathering in Dhaka killed 24 senior AL party members. Sheikh Hasina narrowly escaped that attack which was mainly targeted to kill her. In several similar assassination attempts Hasina has lost several friends and family members. She has survived a total of 19 assassination attempts on her life. After the grenade attack of 2004 she suffers from hearing impairment. 

India has always been an ally of PM Hasina. During her 19 years of premiership, she has been successful in improving Bangladesh’s economy and promoting development activities in the country. However, the West, mainly the USA, is very critical of the democracy in Bangladesh. There are several accusations against the AL government that under the leadership of Hasina democracy has been slowly silenced. Anyone who speaks against her or her government faces jail terms.

Mahfuz Anam, Editor of The Daily Star News of Bangladesh, says that the administration of Sheikh Hasina’s government is very repressive in an interview by Jyoti Malhotra, Founding Editor of AwazSouthAsia. Anam, a senior Editor of Bangladesh, stated that BNP boycotted the results which gave space for the overall grounds for Hasina to win her fourth straight win and fifth power as prime minister. He says that not contesting in elections is “like committing suicide”, therefore the BNP, in his opinion, should have contested the election, no matter how repressive Hasina’s government was. 

During the long rule of Hasina and AL she is given credit to having led Bangladesh out of poverty. But at the same time, she is known to be slowly curtailing the freedom of the people who raised a different voice. The digital security Act she brought in 2018 has been under severe criticism within Bangladesh and internationally. This Act gives the government authority to control the internet or any media by imprisonment of various terms and curtail the freedom of the press. In 2022 the Hasina government ordered the closure of 191 websites accusing them of releasing “anti-state news” citing intelligence reports. 

There are several news reports that have come out from Bangladesh and internationally, particularly from the western world, that Hasina has resorted to using unethical practices in garnering votes on her side. The low voter turn-out implies that the majority of the Bangladeshis were not keen on voting for AL. During Sunday’s general elections, according to the Reuters news agency, polling booths were set ablaze on the eve of the vote, with four people including two children killed in a train fire.  The US Government has openly criticised that Bangladesh has not held a free and fair election.

Economic growth

However, Bangladesh and Sheikh Hasina’s government has received continuous support from India. There is a general feeling that Hasina has taken pro-active steps towards development and economic growth of her country. Several people have opined that as she is repressing a critical voice against her government, there is a high chance that the country will slowly slip into debt traps and retrogressive economic growth.  The other question that people ask is: If her policies are supporting development and she is emerging as a very strong, dynamic and powerful leader, why is she resorting to regressive and anti-democratic practices like curtailing the freedom of press and speech? 

Editor Mahfuz Anam, in his interview to AawazSouthAsia, said that the fear of having lost several family members and friends to assassinations, and facing a series of assassination attempts might have inspired her to develop a strategy to curtail future assassination attempts on her by introducing stringent rules and regulations which are contrary to democratic norms and values. 

(Namrata Sharma is a senior journalist and women rights advocate and can be reached at namrata1964@yahoo.com X handle: @NamrataSharmaP)