‘Why have things turned out this way?’: White paper points out Kleptocratic legacy

Emphasising that one of the world's most vaunted development stories of the recent period – Bangladesh – was built on shaky ground and deep-rooted systemic flaws, the draft of the White Paper on State of the Bangladesh Economy has said it had a lot to do with a number of openly committed infractions.

Rhetorically asking why things had turned out this way, the White Paper Committee said the answers were simple.

"The short answer lies in unchecked corruption, abuse of public resources and misuse of discretionary power for a decade and a half," it said. 

Throughout the paper, which was submitted to the chief adviser of the interim government today (1 December), one theme was repeated: that of a corrupt nexus which pervaded every inch of space. 

What started out as crony capitalism evolved into the rise of the oligarchs manifested in their stranglehold on political governance and economic management, the paper said. 

"Consequently, the government lost its policy sovereignty. These oligarchs influenced and manipulated key facets of the economy to serve their vested interests, concealed by an illusory development narrative sustained by inflated and misleading data," it said.

It said the alliance fostered a corruption-enabling culture that pre-empted reforms and served to effectively suppress pluralistic voices and exclude stakeholders who could have meaningfully contributed to the nation's progress. 

"Indeed, in the face of the student people's upheaval, the then head of the government could not locate a space for social-political negotiation for a peaceful transition."

The final draft said the fundamental reason for such misgovernance was predicated by a pervasive lack of democratic accountability originating from the fraudulent national elections of 2014, 2018 and 2024. 

"Such elections, along with disempowering local government elections, gave shape to a very centralised authoritarian government. 

"For its sustainability, the regime promoted collusion between the ruling politicians, a section of the bureaucrats and certain business elites," said the paper.

It said this "anti-development alliance" not only eroded institutional integrity and democratic accountability but also held back all institutional and policy reforms so as to maximise its gains. 

"A major fallout of these collusive behaviours had been a gradual erosion of the mandated role of the three critical organs of the state, viz. legislature, executive and the judiciary. This process further led to the paralysis of the non-state actors, i.e., media, civil society and private sectors, through intimidation, self-censorship and co-option," according to the paper.