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Students scuffle with police during a protest in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on July 11, 2024. They demanded a merit-based system for civil servants. Visual China file photo

After violent clashes that left hundreds dead and more than 10,000 injured, the Bangladesh Supreme Court finally compromised and made the latest ruling on July 21, drastically reducing the number of civil service positions reserved for the descendants of the country's "founding heroes" to 5%, while 93% of civil service positions will be open to the public based on merit.

This protest, which the Bangladeshi government likened to a "war", was initially triggered by a ruling by the Supreme Court on June 5. On that occasion, the High Court of the Bangladesh Supreme Court ruled to restore the "quota system" for positions in the Bangladesh public service sector that had been abolished six years ago, which triggered nationwide protests that are still continuing to ferment.

Faced with the pressure of civil demonstrations, the Bangladeshi government and the ruling party appealed to the Supreme Court on the one hand, and directed their fire at the main opposition party and protesters on the other hand, taking strong measures, but intensifying the conflict. Now the Bangladesh Supreme Court has made a compromise, but the protesters are not satisfied with the ruling and demand that the authorities completely abolish the system.

The quota system for civil service examinations, which has repeatedly sparked protests, has exposed the inherent contradictions and long-standing problems in many areas of the country over the past 52 years since its independence.

A ruling overturned the results of six years of protests, sparking anger

The target of the nationwide protests in Bangladesh isGovernment civil servant recruitment quota systemTo understand why this system can trigger the anger and protests of thousands of people, we must first understand the basic content of this system and its development process.

The quota system, as the name implies, is to allocate some positions to applicants from a specific group according to the proportion of quotas. After Bangladesh officially separated from Pakistan and became independent in early 1972, the founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his old ruling party, the Bangladesh Awami League (abbreviated as "People's League"), established a quota system in the form of a government decree, reserving 30% of civil service positions for "freedom fighters" (veterans who participated in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War). In addition, women victims of the war and residents of underrepresented areas also received reserved quotas.

Although all applicants need to pass the preliminary examination, the interview stage is recruited according to the quota system. According to the original system design, only 20% of civil service positions are open to all citizens and are selected on the basis of merit. Obviously, this system has been controversial and opposed since its introduction. Since then, with the change of ruling parties and the aging of war veterans, the quota ratios of different groups have been adjusted, increased or decreased, but this system has not been fundamentally abolished.

After the latest reform in 2012, the currentThe quota system reserves 30% of civil service positions for descendants of "freedom fighters", 10% for women, 10% for backward regions and 5% for ethnic minorities.(99% of the country's population is Bangladeshi, and 1% is more than 20 ethnic minorities),1% is reserved for people with disabilities.As a result, the number of positions that are truly selected based on merit has been significantly reduced compared to before the reform, accounting for less than half (44%).

Bangladesh civil service quotas, source: The Daily Star

Obviously, such a system has made it more difficult for many university graduates in Bangladesh to enter government departments, which has aroused their strong dissatisfaction. As early as 2008 and the second year after the latest quota system reform (2013), students, civil service candidates and other groups in the country launched protests centered in the capital Dhaka and the country's famous university Dhaka University, but they ended in failure. In 2018, the long-suppressed dissatisfaction finally broke out into an unprecedented nationwide protest.

The protests in 2018 lasted for five months, with protesters setting up roadblocks across the country. The violent clashes left at least 262 people seriously injured and 44 arrested, attracting the attention of the United States, Germany, Norway, Switzerland and other countries, and exerting real pressure on the Bangladeshi government, forcing it to make concessions again and again: in October 2018, the quota system for civil servants at grades 9 to 13 was abolished; in July 2019, the Bangladeshi government made a commitment that if there were not enough quota groups to apply for civil servants at grades 14 to 20, ordinary candidates would be admitted on a merit basis; in January 2020, the quota system for directly appointed positions above grade 8 was also abolished.

However, six years later, a ruling by the Bangladesh Supreme Court destroyed the hard-won results of the protests: on June 5, the High Court of the Bangladesh Supreme Court ruled that the government's 2018 abolition of the civil service quota system (especially the abolition of the 30% quota for the descendants of "freedom fighters") was illegal, and in fact restored the quota system through judicial means. This undoubtedly became the fuse of this year's nationwide protests. Thus, a protest named"Student Anti-Discrimination Movement"Protests broke out quickly.

Burnt vehicles and a building damaged by fire during a protest against the "quota system" in Dhaka, Bangladesh, July 21, 2024. Visual China data map

400,000 people competing for 3,000 jobs

There are certainly special reasons for the Bangladeshi people (especially students) to be so concerned about how government civil service positions are allocated and recruited.

first,There is controversy over the fairness of the quota system in actual operation.In particular, most positions are not open to the general public, resulting in many candidates with sufficient talents not being hired, seriously undermining the fair principle of admission based on merit.

Facts have proven that the quota system does reserve too many positions for certain groups: Statistics from the Bangladesh Public Service Commission (PSC) show that in the five civil service examinations before the abolition of the quota system, descendants of "freedom fighters" actually accounted for only about 10% (or even lower) of the number of admitted candidates, far from the 30% quota, while the proportion of those admitted on the basis of merit was as high as 67.5%. However, in this case, the recruitment department would rather leave the "quota positions" vacant than recruit outstanding candidates outside this group, which the latter naturally could not accept.

Secondly,The reason why Bangladeshi university students and the general public are so concerned about the allocation of civil service positions is that these are among the few high-quality jobs in the country.Although Bangladesh is the second largest economy in South Asia and has vigorously promoted the development of market economy and privatization in recent years, and has created more employment opportunities in the private sector, the country has not yet completely escaped from the ranks of the least developed countries. The salary level and employment stability of civil servants are significantly stronger than job opportunities in private institutions.

According to statistics, the average monthly salary of Bangladeshi government civil servants in the past two years was about 29,000 taka (about 281 US dollars), which is 25% higher than the average monthly salary of private sector practitioners (23,200 taka, about 225 US dollars). Therefore, in this South Asian country with a population of about 170 million, the competition for civil service recruitment is particularly fierce, with 400,000 graduates competing for 3,000 positions in the system every year.

also,The high quota for the descendants of "freedom fighters" has been questioned, and many protesters believe that the ruling party's political motives are behind it.The Awami League led the 1971 Bangladesh National Liberation War, and most of the veterans of the "freedom fighters" and their descendants are supporters of this old ruling party. Restoring the 30% quota for this group will undoubtedly further consolidate its "base".

Conflicts continue, and the problem in Meng State is not only the dispute over "examination for civil servants"

Judging from the extent of the conflict and the number of casualties,The scale of this "anti-quota system" protest has exceeded that of previous ones.Since the second phase of the protests in early July, violent clashes have occurred between the protesters of the Student Anti-Discrimination Movement and the police and the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student organization under the Awami League, resulting in hundreds of deaths and more than 11,000 injuries. Even civilians and journalists have suffered innocent casualties. Hasina has also publicly stated: "I condemn every killing."

In terms of the geographical scope of the protests, in addition to the traditional demonstration centers - the capital Dhaka and Dhaka University, demonstrations have taken place in major cities across the country, including Chittagong, Comilla, Jessore, Rangpur, and Rajshahi. These protesters also launched the "Bangladesh Road Blockade" campaign on July 7, setting up roadblocks on the streets, roads, and railways of major cities in an organized manner, causing serious traffic jams.

Faced with this situation, the Bangladeshi government appealed the June 5 ruling to the Supreme Court Appeal Court, which decided on July 10 to maintain the status quo for four weeks (the quota system will not be restored during this period), and then made the latest ruling on July 21 - 93% of civil service positions will be recruited based on merit, only 5% of the quota will be reserved for the descendants of "freedom fighters", and the remaining 2% will be reserved for ethnic minorities, the disabled and sexual minorities.

However, the situation was deteriorating rapidly during this period. The Bangladeshi government implemented emergency measures across the country, suspending Internet and mobile network services (even telephone communications were temporarily interrupted in the capital Dhaka) to prevent the spread of information that would not help ease the situation. The official website of the Bangladeshi Prime Minister's Office wrote in red text: "This is no longer a protest. It is now a war."

It can be seen from the participants of this protest and related events that this incident is not just a simple disagreement and contradiction between students, ordinary people and the government on the civil service recruitment method.The quota system for civil servant recruitment is only the fuse of the conflict, and what it also amplifies are the country's inherent deep-seated contradictions.Therefore, whether the quota system exists or is abolished, it cannot solve the dispute once and for all, and the Bangladeshi government will face even more serious problems after the protests themselves subside.

This protest has also become another "battlefield" in the party struggle.Among the students who took part in the protests were members of the Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Chatra Dal, a student organisation affiliated to the main opposition party in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Some of them were killed in clashes with the student organisation of the ruling Awami League.

It is the fact that the Nationalist Party participated in organizing the protests that has led Hasina and other government officials to blame the party for the current unrest. On July 16, Dhaka police raided the Nationalist Party headquarters, arrested seven members of its student organization, and claimed to have found evidence of the Nationalist Party's violent destruction of social order - 100 crude bombs, 500 wooden and bamboo sticks, and 5 to 6 bottles of gasoline. A protest has become a tool for the ruling party and the main opposition party to exchange fire and attack each other.

According to CCTV, since Bangladesh established the Westminster-style parliamentary system in 1991, the Awami League and the Nationalist Party have taken turns in power. In the past 33 years, only the leaders of these two major parties, Hasina and Khaleda Zia, have served as prime ministers.

Led by the country's two traditional political families (the Sheikh family and the Zia family), the Awami League and the Nationalist Party represent the center-left and center-right political forces respectively. Not only do they fight over policy differences and power struggles, but both parties have boycotted general elections on the grounds of electoral fraud and arrest or house arrest of opposition leaders (in the three general elections in the past decade alone, the Nationalist Party boycotted two of them, in 2014 and this year).

With the Awami League's re-election victory in January this year despite a boycott by its opponents, the party has been in power for 15 consecutive years, and Hasina has begun her fifth term as prime minister. However, during the same period, she has encountered (and successfully avoided) at least 19 assassination attempts in recent years, and her old rival Khaleda Zia has been sentenced to 17 years in prison on corruption charges.

Once the parliamentary election itself cannot become the bottom line consensus of the two parties, the direction of the country's political arena will show two worrying signals from the outside world: one is whether Bangladesh, which has only been in transition for more than 30 years, will "turn to authoritarianism" under Hasina's long-term rule; the other is whether the increasingly fierce struggle between the Awami League and the Nationalist Party will plunge the country's political situation into more severe turmoil.

As party struggles become increasingly fierce, economic and livelihood issues are not properly resolved, which will continue to lead to competition for limited resources among different groups in Bangladesh and cause social conflicts.The reason why the Bangladesh Supreme Court ruled on June 5 to restore the quota system was that in 2021, seven Bangladeshi citizens filed a legal challenge to the government's decree to cancel the quota system, one of whom was a descendant of the "freedom fighters". At present, Bangladesh's economic development is still constrained by shortages of funds, technology, and energy, and the unemployment rate is particularly serious.

Based on its unique geopolitical conditions and its status as a populous country with "moderate Muslims", Bangladesh's development is of great significance to South Asia and the world. It can be seen that the current round of protests in Bangladesh surrounding the quota system for civil servants is no small matter, and the series of conflicts derived from it are particularly worthy of vigilance. How to build a peaceful and stable environment for national development and let the people enjoy the dividends of "making the pie bigger" is a problem that the Hasina government and the country's major political parties need to face and answer together.

(Hu Yukun, international political columnist and member of the Translators Association of China)