KEY POINTS:
We do not want to go back to an elective democracy where corruption becomes all pervasive," Lieutenant General Moeen U Ahmed, the chief of the Bangladesh Army, told a conference in Dhaka in April.
Typical talk from a soldier who has thrust aside the civilian political leaders of
his country, but he does have a point, for the leaders in question are a pair of obsessives whose rivalry has poisoned Bangladesh's politics for decades.
Two political dynasties have ruled Bangladesh since 1991. Among the larger democracies, only in the United States have two families, the Bushes and the Clintons, monopolised executive power for a longer time.
But whereas the Bush-Clinton rivalry still continues - if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency next year and goes on to win a second term in 2012, the two American families will have been alternating in power for 28 years - the Bangladeshi rivalry is coming to an end. So too, is democracy.
Bangladesh's democracy was never much to write home about. It won its independence from Pakistan in 1971, but there were 20 years of tyranny and military rule before the first genuinely democratic government was elected in 1991.
This change was part of the wave of non-violent democratic revolutions that began in the Philippines in 1986 and swept through Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand and South Korea.
Two steps forward, one step back. Thailand's democracy has now given way to military rule, and democracy in the Philippines isn't looking too healthy either. But nothing compares with the fall from grace of Bangladesh, which is usually ranked among the five most corrupt countries in the world by Transparency International.
The credit for the disaster goes largely to the two women who have alternated in power for the past 16 years.
Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister from 1996 to 2001, is the daughter of Mujibur Rahman, the "Father of Bangladesh", a former student agitator who led the movement for separation from Pakistan, then became the first leader of independent Bangladesh.
He was an autocrat without a democratic bone in his body. He died in 1975 in a bloody coup that also killed his wife and all his children except Hasina and one other daughter, who were overseas.
So Hasina has a chip on her shoulder. Khaleda Zia, her bitterest rival, is the widow of General Ziaur Rahman, the Army officer who succeeded Mujib after a chaotic interval. He reversed most of Mujib's policies, including socialism and a strictly secular state. Then Zia died in a hail of bullets in another military coup in 1981.
So Khaleda also has a chip on her shoulder. She became Zia's political heir and Prime Minister from 1991-96 and again from 2001-06. Corruption flourished even more vigorously under her rule than under that of Sheikh Hasina.
Neither woman chose politics; both were driven into it by family tragedy. Neither woman is a monster; each would probably offer her own life if it would guarantee a safe and prosperous future for her 150 million fellow-countrymen and women.
But each loathes the other, and would rather die than compromise or co-operate. Too many of their supporters have the same attitude.
The view of General Ahmed, who has in effect been running the country since elections were cancelled in January, is essentially that democracy is to blame. Sheikh Hasina declared a boycott of this year's elections because she believed the incumbent, Khaleda Zia, would rig them.
The general doesn't think democracy is right for Bangladesh. But if it isn't right for Bengalis - one of the most politicised, argumentative populations on the planet - then who is it right for? Democracy has gone wrong because of the bitter heritage from the war of independence. But the solution is to fix it, not to cancel it.
At present, General Ahmed is arresting hundreds of political figures on corruption charges. If they are found guilty by properly constituted courts and banned from further participation in politics, no great harm will be done.
If Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia were among those excluded from politics on the grounds that they engaged in corrupt practices, that would not be a bad thing, either. But politics - democratic politics - needs to continue. It also needs to continue in Thailand, and Pakistan, and all the other places where the voters were "deceived by the politicians", or "made the wrong choices", or whatever other formula the saviours in uniform use when they grab power.
People get things wrong. Politics is a messy business. Winston Churchill said: "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." But he also said: "Democracy is the worst form of government - except all the others that have been tried from time to time."
* Gwynne Dyer's book The Mess They Made: The Middle East After Iraq, was published in New Zealand this month.
