Offers succinct commentary on topical issues that cut across both rich and poor countries. Entails critical insights on poverty, inequality, health, macro-policies and many more
On August 5, 2024, a student-led movement toppled Sheikh Hasina’s deeply entrenched authoritarian regime. The redoubtable Economist magazine voted Bangladesh ‘the country of the year’ (2024) because students led a movement that ‘toppled a tyrant’ and paved the way for a brighter future.
Do the student leaders really deserve such praise, or was there the not-so-hidden hand of external forces?
It is reasonable to argue that the legitimacy of a home-grown pro-democracy movement is impaired when it is co-opted by powerful external actors whose geopolitical considerations might not be aligned with a country’s national interest.
The Economist is silent on this issue, and there is hardly any national debate on this vexed question, perhaps because the media is still not free in the post-Hasina era.
The prime suspect that aided and abetted the expulsion of the Hasina regime is the USA. This proposition is supported by a combination of historical records and circumstantial evidence.
Democracy and the West – giving James Bond 007 licence to kill?
By
Aunul Islam
Aunul Islam, read for his PhD at Imperial College, London. He graduated from The University of Manchester. He is a Quality Assurance Specialist in Higher Education and a Technology Consultant. He is an ex-civil servant of the UK government. A keen gardener, he finds solace through nature in this dysfunctional world orde
Have we really understood what has democracy given us? Let us revisit the basic meaning of democracy.
The word’s etymology is derived from Greek, “demos” meaning “people” and “Kratos” meaning “power.”
Democracy is a system of government in which laws, policies, leadership, and major undertakings of a state or other polity are directly or indirectly governed by the people.
It is also often referred to as the “rule of majority. There have been multiple ways in which democracy has been defined and described.
The present dysfunctional democratic governance of powerful Western countries that we are witnessing made me reflect on democracy through the understanding of a writer and his films that followed: the James Bond film, entitled “Licence to kill”, which resonates with the present democratic world order.
I will briefly narrate the basis of Ian Fleming’s book and associated films and finally discuss how they relate to the so-called new democratic world order.
James Bond, bearing the unique code 007, is a secret service agent of a democratic British Government, with other important characters like Q and M, which are code names in the actual British secret service. Where necessary, 007 has the licence to eliminate enemies within his own country and worldwide.
If we believe in a true democracy, and there are many variants of this, the UK parliament is in no way similar to the USA system nor they are to the European one with proportional representation. A mere popular vote of 30% may take a political party in a ruling position and thus it is not the majority. So, any major decision taken for its own citizens is not truly democratic. To make things worse in governance, the cabinet in the UK makes the decision. The fallacy is having an autocratic leader ( Tony Blair, Boris Johnson, etc) bulldoze a decision detrimental to society and make a mockery of democracy. The worst scenario is the “license to kill” in an overseas country if they feel that they are “undemocratic” or do not align with their beliefs and strategies.
Many examples of undemocratic intervention, even bypassing the UN, abound. A glaring example is the invasion of Iraq. The genocide in Gaza by the so-called democratic State of Israel is the latest egregious example of licence to kill. The list goes on. Democracy and double standards are in conspicuous display. One is witnessing millions being slaughtered, killed and maimed around the world, where USA, the leading democratic nation, felt it “necessary” and others are complicit by means of abhorrent participation either directly or indirectly.
Exhibit 2: an iconic image from the invasion of Iraq 2003 by US and its allies
As we dawn into the year 2025, it is painful to envision a world led by democratic countries and their governance beyond its own borders, where the 007, the M and Qs are the agents of destruction in a world full of ever-growing conflict!
Reflections on development and governance 
