(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Bangladesh's prime minister has dismissed accusations that democracy and rule of law are being undermined by her increasingly authoritarian behaviour and by widespread human rights abuses by the police and security forces.
In an interview in Dhaka, Sheikh Hasina rejected claims that extrajudicial killings, numerous so-called "enforced disappearances", mass arrests of opposition activists and Islamists, and new restrictions on media and Internet freedoms were turning the world's third largest Muslim nation into a repressive, de facto one-party state .
"My job is to assist the common people," Hasina said. "I do politics for the people, not for me ... People are enjoying democracy now. What people want is their basic needs. So I'm trying to help people ensure their basic need, that means food security, healthcare, education, and job opportunity and a better life.
"By 2021 Bangladesh will be a middle-income country and by 2041 Bangladesh will be a developed country ... All the democratic institutions are working and people are satisfied and people are enjoying it. So the way you say I am dominating, I am not dominating. I am serving people."
Hasina, in power since 2009, is credited internationally with helping Bangladesh achieve key UN anti-poverty and development goals and appears to enjoy a high level of domestic support.
She flatly rejected claims that the security services, particularly the feared, paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) implicated in numerous so-called "crossfire" killings, were beyond constitutional
or parliamentary control.
On the issue of press freedom, Hasina said her ruling Awami League (AL) government had allowed an unprecedented expansion in privately-controlled television channels, newspapers and online media since the 1990s.
"Who brought the change? It is me. I opened it up," she said. "Now we have 41 private television channels (and) altogether nearly 700 newspaper all over the country. So they're writing and they're totally free. And NGOs are also working according to the rules and law they have.
Hasina said the biggest opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP), from whom she took over power in 2008, had shot itself in the foot by boycotting last year's national polls, which the AL and its minor party allies subsequently won by default. The BNP and its controversial Islamist party ally, Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), have since launched sometimes violent demonstrations and nationwide strikes to try to force new elections under the supervision of a caretaker government, so far to no avail.
Hasina said she had telephoned Zia before the 2014 elections, offering her ministries in an interim, joint administration as a way of overcoming BNP suspicions that the poll might be rigged. Zia refused, she claimed.
"(Zia) made a political mistake not to participate in the election," Hasina said, accusing her opponent of supporting terrorism and launching killing sprees across Bangladesh.
Hasina, who has escaped several assassination attempts since entering politics, is accused of using public fears about terrorism to smear political opponents and justify harsh action against them. Critics say that despite her strong stance, she has failed to curb an ongoing, nationwide Islamist revival - and is losing the "battle of ideas" with Islamists.
The opposition parties also claim the government is exploiting the country's international crimes tribunal (ICT) investigating mass killings at the time of Bangladesh's 1971 war of liberation from Pakistan, and the 1975 assassinations, to settle old scores.
Ataur Rahman, chairman of the independent Bangladesh Political Science Association, said the government's high-handed behaviour was damaging faith in democracy in Bangladesh and risked provoking a popular backlash.
"There is a growing authoritarian trend towards one-person rule. The result is that we are on the brink of a loss of democracy," Rahman said. "Most government institutions, like the police and the judiciary, are losing their autonomy. The civil service bureaucracy has lost is independence."
With the economy growing annually at about 6%, with living standards rising for most (from an admittedly low base), and with the country relatively stable compared to the upheavals of the past, most Bangladeshis appear content to have Hasina in charge. A recent poll by Nielsen-Bangladesh, echoing previous surveys, gave her an impressive 67% approval rate.
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