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Hassan isn't going to run in the next election; he's coming in as a caretaker, which is what he did in the last caretaker election about 20 years ago. But he's very explicitly a caretaker; he's not here to be a long-term political actor in Bangladesh. So why is it that then, why is it that it is necessary to have these... |
First of all, the existing forces in politics benefited from each of these systems, all of their allies. They were put in place by the existing political system, so they're incredibly unlikely to want to change it. But secondly, without a force, without a specifically large institutional force against this, it's likely... |
So even if they all agree there should be reform, if they don't agree on it, they're on net going to get outvoted. And also, they weren't involved in the creation of it. The student leaders got named Mohammad Hassan in that serve in roles with those commissions developing it, so they are the ones who are involved in de... |
Why is it that they can only get this done if they are a party? First of all, being a part of the party is necessary for branding and selling your campaign. Secondly, like elections, it's a big business. You need operatives, you need money, you need ads, you need institutional capacity. You can't do this as two or thre... |
The next thing I want to prove is that other institutional power in Bangladesh is very, very rare because they keep going to other institutions. UN might support, but there's good and I ask them to name them; they can't. But there's good structural reasons to believe there aren't a lot of other large institutions in B... |
First of all, it was an authoritarian country. Secondly, the Awami League tried to position itself as a big tent party that included anyone, so they had an incentive to try and bring in any other institutions and align themselves with the Awami League. Thirdly, Bangladesh has been in chaos for many years. The initial p... |
So that means that there aren't a lot of other large institutions that could step into this gap. The best comparative, then, BNP or other smaller parties, opening government, says, "Well, students are seen as bad; they're seen as irrational; they're seen as too young." But the problem with this is that this party isn't... |
Also, they brought in a large number of university professors who actually designed the original system of reform. They worked with their own professors and military leaders, as opening opposition points out, military leaders who told the military to put down their arms, not to oppose this. And those people have almost... |
That is why they're likely to be taken seriously, and that also robs closing government, who, well, they're incredibly terrible, but they brought in a large amount of support. The key thing is that they are important for bringing those people together. I also want to note here, not only is it important that they're par... |
Because, as I allude to, the entire Supreme Court of Bangladesh was forced to resign because they were seen as trying to bring back Sheikh Hasina. That means that they're going to get to appoint the next set of justices who will make the first interpretations of the new Constitution that will serve as the baseline prec... |
They also set the norms of how it's interpreted, and if another party wins, they have an incentive to show that the new rules that they don't like are very bad and very difficult in order to manufacture consent to get them taken away. It's very important that they are not only involved in the right giver, but that they... |
What are the benefits of this? It means that you get a government that functions, which is important for your economics. It also means you get rid of the quota system, right? Which is not only unitarily but also incredibly bad for the functioning of government because you appoint a large number of freedom fighters to t... |
And it crucially makes the Bangladesh Public Service not politically neutral because the freedom fighters that are appointed have political allegiances, and that means you don't have a neutral public service. That pretty much what way pretty intuitively over the rest of the debate. |
Second extension: Why is it that you why is it that you get more stability? Opening government says you will get the military... See, opening opposition pretty concisely points out the military explicitly allows them to come through. You're very unlikely to get a military coup. |
Why is it that the BNP would be incredibly bad? First of all, their leader, it's not clear he can legitimately run in charge on anti-corruption, and different courts are split over his actual legitimacy as a candidate. So that means that they're incredibly likely to be protests. Secondly, there's very likely to be huge... |
Thirdly, your relationship with India is likely to be substantially worse, and they're likely to foment unrest on the ground. We already saw Indian forces in the country protecting Sheikh Hasina during the last revolution, and they have an incentive to foment chaos in the country in order to reestablish their influence... |
And I know these aren't the only reasons why you don't get stability. There are also reasons why the BNP is bad; like they are anti-Hindu, we should care about Hindus. They are anti-India; we should care about your relationship with India, your trade relationship, your security relationship. They have done corruption w... |
Additionally, I think it's important that these student leaders are there to be able to tamp down protests. Opening opposition says, "Well, the student leaders might do protests," but I think that's the lower impact argument because their protests, on net, have been pretty good and pretty reasonable. |
What's more important is the bad, more aggressive sets of protests that might come from other actors, which we think they're uniquely good at tamping down and stopping from becoming violent. First of all, we will still lie true if these people don't follow through on their promises. Secondly, they are powerful figures ... |
When they're in government, because they have a history of being receptive to protest, rather than, they will never listen," this protest will never work. |
</mo> |
<gw> |
First, I'll explain why closing government wins the debate, and secondly, why the opposition bench loses. Firstly, why did we win the debate? I think we make kind of two contributions. The first is just explaining in substantial detail why these student leaders would be both bad at politics, but also, perhaps more impo... |
Of course, as this team might respond, some of those demands are like fine. For instance, asking for compensation for families of protesters who were killed—that's fine. But those kinds of demands are not sensationalist, nor are they radical. They're extremely unlikely to focus on campaigns of opposition or media, the ... |
Even if those police were not directly involved, like they didn't kill a person, they just have jurisdiction over those universities. No security in universities, firing Huge CRA ofc, and a national ban on the Awami League unit. I think those policies are bad in a few respects. Firstly, I would oppose many of them on f... |
I think police, who are often underpaid and not personally responsible for violence against students, who happen to be part of a systemically corrupt institution but don't have much choice in that, should not be fired from their jobs. I think those are immoral demands, and we should not stand for them. Secondly, those ... |
This doesn't work, which at very worst for us is just an enormous opportunity cost of resources, a failure to get your policies passed. But also, my group is incredibly embarrassing and delegitimizing for these student protests and for all the civil society organizations and movements that we point out are attached to,... |
The responsible get from opening opposition in a POI is, firstly, well, if there's a risk of a coup, then you moderate. I think Ellie preempts this in quite a lot of detail. We explain that you aren't rational, but it's very unlikely that there's a risk of a coup on their side. You're not thinking about the future in t... |
And importantly, even if some people are rational in this way, the most prominent leaders of that movement will not be. The second plan they make is if you don't moderate, you're going to lose the election. But firstly, I would note if that harms the movement of anti-authoritarian student protesters, regardless, even i... |
But secondly, maybe at the very best, this hurts OG, but it doesn't hurt us because we explain why involvement in civil society matters. And importantly, you can also run more successfully for politics later. For instance, you could run more successfully for politics later if you're hard with this brush. If, for instan... |
And I want to know if even if you only get one politician representing this constituency in Parliament, you cause huge amounts of chaos. You shift the Overton window; you mean that people discredit other more sensible leaning policies, like restrictions on police powers. That there's gridlock in Parliament—all of that ... |
But the problem with this is, firstly, claims in terms of entire commitments to corruption, while true, seem relatively symmetric given the features that this team themselves points out in terms of the political system in Bangladesh at large. But secondly, radicalism, of course, as our open says, can be bad but can als... |
We explain that the changes we're asking for are bad, which means they are both unpopular but also undesirable. But finally, we impact the alternative. Civil society not just politics, which makes society and makes government better—we win. |
Let's now talk about opening opposition. Opening opposition, I think, is dangerously pessimistic in their vision of the status quo. They say the BNP will have no political competition without students to push back. The reason for this is because it's prohibitively hard for the youth to vote. The BNP receives money from... |
One attempt to bridge this gap is to say, well, people care a lot about youth and revolution. Now you have to take that opportunity. That is insufficient for a few reasons. Firstly, it could last that momentum, right? Like if you present yourself as political critics, part of civil society, it is likely that the actual... |
Finally, they say the BNP has a textile contract, which is bad. One, this is self-correcting; yes, lobbying is powerful, but votes matter from individual people whose wages are going down. There are other competing businesses that join, like eristic contracts with fire. Or secondly, if the textile industry is so corrup... |
Finally, let's probe about closing opposition. Firstly, they say the young people in politics will help the future political system in terms of changes to the Constitution. One, it's unlikely that those young people are elected or listened to. If they are elected, for the reasons we give, they don't have the ads of the... |
But finally, they say, well, the students have united lots of different parts of society. That's true with regards to taking down the AL; it's not true with regards to rewriting the Constitution, where you want usually different interests. If you are the military as opposed to if you are students. They say next that th... |
They say your relationship with India is bad. I'll fit that; it's way worse. Because India hated the student protesters, sent police to target them and bring them down. Is your relationship with India, or rather, does it hurt it? Because obviously, India doesn't like the student protesters; it doesn't like it when the ... |
</gw> |
<ow> |
The youth leaders win elections, and secondly, on policy, they implement when they win, good or bad. Firstly, on youth leaders, whether they'll win elections, the first problem, the first reason why I think this is pretty obvious that we explained is that they have already proven themselves to be highly effective polit... |
And then after that, being able to negotiate the process of establishing a relatively democratic transitional government in order to manage the process of moving towards democracy and establishing a series of missions in order to do it and analyze the problems that existed in the previous system, which could suggest to... |
I think that while they are probably likely to be effective, they're unlikely to be unbeatable. That is firstly because they've been disempowered by the Awami League; they've been in long-term opposition for decades and suggest they haven't had that much infrastructure around. Secondly, and additionally, they've boycot... |
Now, for opening opposition, we agree with opening opposition that in the counteract without students, it's likely that this BNP is going to win the election without student opposition. What Matt says is not that this is never going to happen, but that if it did happen, it would be bad because the BNP isn't a whole par... |
It's led by a person who is currently being charged for money laundering; its previous experience has been previously called out for corruption, which guarantees them some amount of legitimacy. Secondly, the people in Bangladesh want democracy. Living in a dictatorship, having at least one party that is working hard to... |
Thirdly, the students aren't a super racialized religious party, which is a characteristic of the BNP that has alienated a lot of people in Bangladesh, who see that racialization as something that causes division, escalates tensions in the region of India, and is detrimental towards the likelihood of getting trade and ... |
People are likely to be adept. Let's do some way; so, it says it won't work. This is obviously going to be a hard thing to achieve, but now is the best time to achieve it of any time in the future. The Awami League is split; the Awami League is on the run, and their leader has left India. They lack a firm alternative t... |
So now is the only time that it could work, and that's when it's in so rearing around the likelihood. Then I think we do prove the highlight of success; in fact, this is considered by the Prime Minister, who claims that they will be so popular and unbeatable, they will have unchecked power, which will result in them be... |
But secondly, even if they don't, it's still good for them to have some level of power. Firstly, because it makes better accountability on the BNP and the Awami League if they are the ones to end up in power. But secondly, it's a boost for building momentum towards future political successes as you build institutional ... |
Next, let's talk about whether or not their policies are bad. They outline that some of these policies might have negative consequences. Firstly, many people who they want to remove from power are extremely unpopular. For example, police commissioners in Bangladesh are notorious for being permissive of things like poli... |
Secondly, it's often necessary to remove these figures in order to remove corruption. A lot of these people are aligned with corrupt political figures from the Awami League, which makes removing them necessary in order to disrupt the infrastructure that allows corruption to continue. Because even if you change who's in... |
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