Why banning political parties is never a good idea
With the Jamaat ban overturned, Awami League finds itself in the former’s shoes. But do party bans work in the long run?
Four days before a mass uprising toppled the Awami League regime, the then ruling party decided to strike one final blow at its sworn enemy, the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, by banning it and all its front organisations.
Now, with the Jamaat ban overturned, the Awami League finds itself in the former's shoes; a writ filed recently in the High Court seeks the ban and cancelling of the registration of the Bangladesh Awami League for killing students.
Ironic still is that when Jamaat-e-Islami's registration with the Election Commission was declared illegal by the High Court in August 2013, the decision had popular support in the form of the Shahbag movement. Today, the decision to ban the Awami League is receiving similar popular support in the aftermath of the July Revolution, which saw a death toll of 757 and counting.
The High Court has scheduled the order on the petition for 1 September, but Attorney General Md Asaduzzaman has called for its dismissal.
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"Let politics remain in the political arena," he stated during a hearing.
Indeed, though the decision on the ban will play out in court, the question of banning a political party is, naturally, more political in nature than it is legal.
Throughout history, multiple political parties worldwide have sought to achieve autocracy through democratic means. Banning such a party would make sense since the alternative would be akin to suicide for democracy.
The recent brutality unleashed upon protesters, repealing of the caretaker government system, enforced disappearances, destruction of judicial independence, and successive sham elections thus makes Awami League a prime candidate for such a ban.
And by that logic, cancelling Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh's registration [effectively a ban] for its charter being discriminatory and contradictory to Article 28 (1) of the country's constitution can also be rationalised.
What does a ban on a political party actually mean? You can ban a name or a brand, but the people who support that brand are still there. At the end of the day, you are dealing with people who believe in some sort of political ideology
However, this poses a paradox: Can one use democracy as a platform to deny someone else's freedom?
Afterall, though the Awami League was ousted from power and many of its top leaders have either been arrested or remain in hiding, the party might still have a significant supporter base, if only because they do not like the other options.
No study has looked at the specific support base of the different political parties in Bangladesh, but a CPD-CMI working paper published in 2014 reads that the Awami League has a greater support base among the religious and ethnic minorities.
Traditionally, AL also drew support from the rural areas but in recent years, the party also picked up support from the urban middle classes and business groups, the paper reads.
While it is highly likely that the Awami League has lost considerable support in recent years and especially the last month, in the absence of suitable alternatives, for whom will its loyal supporters vote? For whom did Jamaat or BNP supporters vote during the 2014, 2018 or 2024 elections? Is it any surprise that voter turnout dwindled over the years, with the 12th parliamentary poll seeing only 41.99% votes cast (a figure that was seen as suspicious by many)?
Democracies have come up with different solutions to the problem of undemocratic parties. Some ban antidemocratic parties or establish a constitutional or legislative mechanism for dissolving them, such as in Germany, which banned the Nazi party after World War II and has considered banning far-right parties like the AfD. Croatia, Italy, Poland, Spain, Turkey and France have also taken similar measures because they find that the ideologies and practices of these political parties run counter to basic democratic values.
But that has not necessarily helped.
"Banning political parties does not work," said Dr Imtiaz Ahmed, professor of International Relations at Dhaka University. "If you ban a party but people still adhere to the same beliefs or ideologies, the party will return under a new banner. Take the western world for example, where, despite numerous efforts to quell Nazi ideology, neo-Nazi groups are still emerging. The acceptance of people is key."
Furthermore, he added, "During periods of instability, particular beliefs and the parties that represent them might return despite bans, as can be seen in the western world."
Other democracies, such as the US or UK, do not explicitly ban undemocratic parties, but that is because they do not consider these fringe political groups a major threat.
As for Bangladesh, its brush with political party bans has historically been short-lived.
Upon independence in 1971, the government had banned Jamaat-e-Islami (Pakistan) from political participation in the newly-formed Bangladesh. In 1975, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman went a step further and banned all opposition parties, essentially turning the country into a one-party state under the Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League (BaKSAL).
But that move could not stand the test of time as following the military coup that year, the ban on Jamaat was lifted and the new party Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh was formed. Three years later, the multiparty system was reinstated.
In the past 15 years, though no parties were officially banned, the cancellation of Jamaat's registration coupled with mass arrests — especially in the months leading up to elections — effectively enforced a soft ban on both the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat.
These moves kept the two parties away from parliament in the short run. But despite the Awami League government's unrelenting efforts, it could not arrest all activists, let alone quell support for either party.
"What does a ban on a political party actually mean? You can ban a name or a brand, but the people who support that brand are still there. At the end of the day, you are dealing with people who believe in some sort of political ideology," explained Mubashar Hasan, post-doctoral researcher at Oslo University.
Banning beliefs or ideologies, and more importantly, banning people from subscribing to said ideologies, is a task impossible for any government, no matter how Orwellian it aspires to be; 'thoughtcrime' is ultimately impossible to police.
"Instead of banning a party, which is an abstraction, criminal offences have to be identified at an individual level. Who has committed the unlawful act? Generalisation might actually lead to many of the offenders going free, as it happened with the Nazis who fled to South America," said Dr Imtiaz.
Mubasher Hasan also suggests a surgical approach: instead of banning the Awami League en masse, the government or courts could ban those involved with killings.
"In the case of Jamaat, the reasoning that the Awami League government used to cancel its registration was that some of its leaders were convicted of war crimes. But in the case of Awami League, nobody has — technically — been convicted yet. Once tried and if convicted, those who were involved in the mass killings can be banned from politics," he said.
