A brief history of Bangladesh's presidency

We would like to think that the manner in which Jamiruddin Sircar officiated as acting president was a strange dream at best and a comedy at worst. We are still intrigued, though, with this pretty irritating question of why Iajuddin Ahmed did not travel from the airport to the Combined Military Hospital as the nation's president. After all, the presidential standard was on the vehicle bearing Jamiruddin Sircar to and from the airport. It was a spectacle that left us surprised, even a mite irritated.

When you consider the history of the presidency in Bangladesh, though, you are quite likely to be amused at the various ways in which it has risen in fortune or fallen upon bad days. It would appear, given our study of all the national history that has been forged in these three decades and a half, that the office of president has constantly been in the line of fire or has been a source of attraction for ambitious men, maybe even women.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

In early 1972, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman decided in his wisdom that the presidency was not for him to come to terms with, or vice versa. Having spearheaded the national movement for autonomy and then for political sovereignty, he chose to assume office as prime minister of Bangladesh under a Westminster-style of government. That was quite all right, except that a pretty large number of people in the country had expected the Father of the Nation to adopt a political position that would leave him as a symbolic national figure, more in line with Mahatma Gandhi than with Mohammad Ali Jinnah (whose powers as governor general of Pakistan were awesome, much to the resentment of Liaquat Ali Khan). Bangabandhu's move toward assuming a prime ministerial role meant elbowing Tajuddin Ahmed, the wartime prime minister in the Mujibnagar government, aside and into the job of finance minister. And into the presidency stepped the respectable Justice Abu Sayeed Chowdhury.

Overall, it was a splendid arrangement. Here was Mujib, the man of history, busy charting the course the country was taking; and there was Justice Chowdhury, the man of law, upholding the image of Bangladesh as a decent, law-abiding and politically astute nation.

But it was an arrangement that was not to last, to our regret. By December 1973, President Chowdhury was to relinquish office and move out of the country, as its roving ambassador. Something went out of the old idealism as Mohammadullah, a veteran Awami Leaguer who had been deputy speaker and then speaker of the Jatiyo Sangsad, stepped into the office left vacant by Abu Sayeed Chowdhury's departure.

Mohammadullah was a good, perhaps even an accomplished politician. But his brief tenure as president of Bangladesh was unremarkable. He remained in the shadow of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, like so many other men, and then found himself with little choice but to leave Bangabhaban once the Fourth Amendment to the constitution informed us all that the presidency was now to be the pivot around which our history would move. Mohammadullah could not be left in charge of that pivot. And so Bangabandhu transformed himself into Bangladesh's president for the second time. That first time, of course, was for him largely inconsequential since he had spent his presidency battling his Pakistani accusers before a military tribunal in distant Lyallpur. More to the point, he was quite unaware of the reality of his Bengalis waging a war for freedom with him as their iconic president.

The powers that the Mujib era gave the presidency were to be its defining characteristic in subsequent years. Every scheming politician and every shrewd military officer seemed to think, at some point or other, that presidential office was what suited his genius.

It was such a line of reasoning that prompted Bangabandhu's commerce minister Khondokar Moshtaque Ahmed into leading the first military coup in the country and catapulting himself into the presidency. It was a morally ugly presidency at work between August 15 and November 6, 1975. More significantly, it was government by murder. But things surely took a civilized turn with Justice Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem, chief justice of the Supreme Court, taking charge, courtesy of Major General Khaled Musharraf, of Bangabhaban.

It was not exactly an edifying period for Bengalis, but it was in large measure an opportunity for them to return to being part of the civilized world. The assassination of Musharraf on November 7 was a bad jolt, but somehow the nation was relieved that the new men storming to power on the strength of the so-called Sipahi-Janata revolution kept Sayem on. President Sayem developed and maintained the position that the country would go for fresh general elections in 1977. But he had not known that with all the soldiers before and around him calling the shots, his position was becoming increasingly untenable.

General Ziaur Rahman, unhappy with being a mere deputy chief martial law administrator, one fine morning turned up with the other two DCMLAs at Bangabhaban and demanded that President Sayem go and let him handle the presidency. Sayem's initial, meek protests soon petered out and Zia, not much to the nation's surprise, became president and chief martial law administrator.

He relished the job, to a point where he thought that seeking a proper mandate to hold on to the presidency by calling an election in June 1978 was in order. He was still chief of staff of the army, still chief martial law administrator. But he spotted nothing wrong in waging an electoral campaign against his challenger, General MAG Osmany, the man under whose command he had served (and had also been disciplined) in the War of Liberation. Zia won, predictably, with the entire government machinery working for him.

The Zia presidency was a ruthless exercise in power, owing naturally to the background of the man holding the job. The difficulty with politics shaping itself in the shadow of powerful men is that when these men leave the scene, their places are taken by others who may not quite measure up to the legacy, however sweet or sordid it might be. Justice Sattar, a respected but timorous man, beat Kamal Hossain in the November 15, 1981 elections but then failed to beat back General Hussein Muhammad Ershad's developing assaults on politics.

It was thus that on March 24, 1982 Bangladesh slid down a path that was as morally despicable as it was politically disturbing. Ershad's nine years (or nearly) as president were a boom time for corruption, in almost every patch of the social and political landscape. He jailed politicians, then freed them and let them into his regime. Ataur Rahman Khan and Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury were happy turning their backs on their illustrious past because Ershad needed them as his prime ministers. They only ruined their own reputations. Good men like Korban Ali and Abdul Halim Chowdhury are forgotten today, because they saw nothing wrong in jettisoning principles and joining Ershad. The presidency in Ershad's hands was an instrument of corruption. Worse, it was symbolic of the degree of humiliation that could be visited on a high institution of the state once that institution fell into the wrong hands.

The powerful presidency which Bangabandhu left as his legacy in 1975 assumed even greater clout in the Zia and Ershad years before returning to the symbolism it was designed to be in 1972.

Presidential dignity was restored in the years of Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed. President Badruddoza Chowdhury could have added newer layers to such dignity had he not left office in a hurry, almost in a state of fear. There is nothing in the constitution to suggest that a head of state can be impeached for the sin of not visiting the grave of an earlier, obviously dead president. But Chowdhury moved on -- and out. The presidency is once more a diminished institution today.

In some strange ways, the presidency has in turn seen the reputations of some of its occupants sliced away. Abu Sayeed Chowdhury, having left Bangabhaban in 1973, came back in early August 1975 to join Bangabandhu's government as minister without portfolio. Days later, the usurper Moshtaque made him foreign minister. Mohammadullah, having ceased to be president in early 1975, quickly became a minister. In 1982, President Sattar made him vice president. Barely twenty-four hours later, Ershad staged his coup d'etat and sent everyone packing.

Time was when Justice Nurul Islam and Moudud Ahmed came close to being presidents of Bangladesh. Both men served General Ershad as vice presidents. Before his sudden death a couple of weeks ago, Colonel Akbar Hossain, in serious vein or otherwise, thought he could be president. Some years ago, Abdus Samad Azad told yours truly, with that mischievous twinkle in the eye, that he ought to have been president of the republic. It was a time when the government he served was beginning to lose patience with Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Executive Editor, Dhaka Courier.