Non-Party Caretaker Government in Bangladesh (1991-2001): Dilemma for Democracy?

Abstract

The paper attempts to analyze the compatibility of Non-party Caretaker Government (NCG) with democracy in Bangladesh. Bangladesh, since her inception as an independent state from “internal colonialism” of Pakistan through a sanguinary war of liberation in 1971, has been practicing democracy. However, at different junctures of the country’s political history, the practice of democracy was impeded and eventually replaced by the military rule. Since early 1990s, Bangladesh entered to a new phase of democratic governance and opted for parliamentary democracy which still continues. Elections and democracy are intertwined and free and fair elections are quintessential for democratic governance. In Bangladesh, like many other developing countries, holding free and fair elections is a big challenge. With the acrimonious experiences of rigged elections under party governments in the past, Bangladesh in 1990 established a system of non-party caretaker government to ensure the holding of free and fair elections initially on consensus basis and later through an amendment (thirteenth) to the constitution which received many appreciations at the outset. However, after successfully working and conducting few parliamentary elections, the system ran into difficulties, and in the midst of political chaos and unhealthy competition for power among the political parties, the system of non-party caretaker government was scraped from the constitution (through the fifteenth amendment) which sparked serious debate and both contents and discontents in the political landscape of Bangladesh. Against this backdrop, the paper would analyze the working of three Non-party Caretaker Governments from 1991 to 2001 and argue that NCG seems to have become a dilemma for democracy in Bangladesh.

Keywords: Caretaker government, non-party caretaker government, democracy, political party,   Bangladesh.