The Daily Star Editor and Publisher Mahfuz Anam on Sunday said political affiliation has increasingly influenced professions and institutions, including the media, bureaucracy, police and intelligence agencies.
Speaking at the Bay of Bengal Conversation, organised by the Centre for Governance Studies, Anam criticised the politicisation of journalism, saying journalists may have personal political preferences but should not openly align themselves with political parties.
“You can have a personal preference, and of course you have a right to vote. But in a profession where credibility is your lifeblood, how can you openly side with a political party and still expect that you will enjoy credibility?” he said.
The veteran journalist said the bureaucracy, which should serve as an efficient and politically neutral machinery of government, has also become politicised.
The police, he said, are frequently used as a partisan extension of political power, while intelligence agencies have also been used for political purposes.
Anam said independent institutions, including the National Human Rights Commission, Anti-Corruption Commission and Right to Information Commission, have similarly suffered from political interference.
“Over-politicisation has, in a way, corroded the effectiveness of almost all our institutions,” he said.
Anam said Bangladesh has repeatedly shown its ability to dismantle dictatorships but has failed to build durable democratic institutions.
“The tragic reality is that we are so bad at building democratic institutions,” he said, identifying excessive politicisation of state and professional institutions as a key reason for the country’s governance failures.
Bangladeshis have an “almost enviable capacity” to unite against authoritarian rule, citing the Liberation War in 1971, the mass uprising against military rule in 1990-91 and the 2024 uprising.
But the unity that brings people together to overthrow a dictatorship often disappears once the authoritarian regime is removed, he said.
“When dismantling dictatorship, the nation unites, but once the dictatorship is dismantled, the nation divides,” Anam said.
He said the groups that unite to remove an authoritarian government often become rivals afterward, preventing the country from institutionalising democracy.
Excessive politicisation has weakened almost every major institution in Bangladesh, he added.
“We really don't know how to run our country. We really don't know what governance is,” he said.
“We really don’t know how to bring people together, with all their energy, all their innovation, all their resilience, and turn that resource into national strength,” the editor said.
Since then, there have been some fair elections under caretaker governments, but those were not lasting. “Instead of institutionalising fair elections, we got more and more into conflicts, rivalries and then destruction,” he said.
He said Bangladesh had failed to institutionalise democratic structures. “The reason is that we have over-politicised every institution imaginable. This over-politicisation has corroded the effectiveness of almost all our institutions,” he said.