Precarious Democracies

,In 2024, over two billion people have either voted or will vote in over 50 countries including all the major countries in South Asia, the world’s most populous region. While Bhutan, Bangladesh and Pakistan voted in the first two months of 2024, India’s general elections are set to run from April through to June 2024 and Sri Lanka’s presidential election is set for September.

The overall health of the democracies in the region does not paint an optimistic picture judging from the election experience of the period in review. In Bangladesh, the country’s main opposition party, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), boycotted the elections. In Pakistan, although candidates affiliated to former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf won the most number of seats at the national level, coalition strategies and army interference ensured that Shahbaz Sharif, of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, became the country’s next prime minister.

In India, systematic erosion of watchdog and regulatory bodies such as the country’s Election Commission, has made the opposition parties, civil society and independent observers sceptical about the fairness of the electoral process. In January, mayoral elections were conducted in the northern city of Chandigarh. The presiding officer named the candidate of the ruling party at the centre the winner, despite the fact that his opponent had garnered more votes. Remarkably, the presiding officer was caught on camera tampering with the votes. Four months before the general elections, such an act should have raised a ruckus. But, even as the lower courts declined to intervene, the majority of the mainstream media remained cowed down. The Supreme Court only intervened after significant social media pressure.

Maldives held a hotly contested presidential election in September-October 2023 that saw one poll followed by a run-off. Dr Mohammed Muizzu, seen to be pro-China, defeated incumbent President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, perceived to be pro-India. Besides contending with domestic concerns like high levels of debt, over-crowded cities and housing shortages, the presidential election was almost a referendum on whether China or India would gain more footing in the Indian Ocean archipelago nation, considered of strategic importance in the region. The report of the EU Election Observation Mission, Maldives noted that while media freedoms were generally respected during elections, “Political partisanship of media was prevalent, including in public service media, while there were some indications of information manipulation in social media.” For example, the Public Service Media (PSM) “blurred the line between the incumbent’s campaign and presidential responsibilities and emphasised government accomplishments during the entire campaign period”.

In the backdrop of such democratic backsliding across South Asia, the media is left vulnerable and compromised. It is hard to assess which country has it worst this election season. India has long been considered the most robust democracy in the region, a country where curbs on the media existed but were relatively less extreme. Over the past few years that trend has shifted. But, according to many analysts, Bangladeshi democracy might be moving towards a total collapse with the opposition political parties and media being functionally choked.

Commuters in the Maldives drive past a billboard displaying a political advertisement for the then-opposition People’s National Congress on September 6, 2023. Through the Presidential Election, politically partisan media was documented by international observers, with some evidence of information manipulation in social media, and pro-government messages shared via public broadcasters. Credit: Mohamed Afrah / AFP

Eliminating Opposition

Bangladesh went to the polls on January 7, 2024, but violence had already taken hold of the country a few months prior. Almost 10,000 opposition leaders were arrested after a rally on October 28, 2023, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. At least 16 people were killed – including two police officers – and over 5,500 were injured. At least 30 journalists were also attacked and had their equipment damaged by both political party activists and the police while covering the rally, which was organised by the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), seeking an independent caretaker government to conduct elections.

During the rally, protestors ambushed Mohammad Ali Mazed, a video journalist with Agence France-Presse, hit him on the head and stole his equipment. Rafsan Jani, a reporter for the Dainik Kalbela newspaper was hospitalised after being brutally beaten.

Several other journalists were injured including New Age journalist Ahamed Fayez; Bangla Tribune’s Salman Tarek Shakil, Jobaer Ahmed, Abu Saleh Musa, Rabiul Islam Rubel and Touhidul Islam Tarek; Dhaka Times’ Salekin Tarin, and Kazi Ihsan Didar; Daily Inqilab’s F A Masum; The Daily Ittefaq’s Tanvir Ahammed and Sheikh Naser; Ekushey TV’s Touhidur Rahman and Arifur Rahman; Desh Rupantor’s Arifur Rahman Rabbi; Share Biz’s Hamidur Rahman; and freelance journalist Maruf.

The ruling Awami League blamed the BNP for the violence, while the BNP accused the government of infiltrating the gathering to initiate violence and discredit what they said was a peaceful movement. Regardless of who initiated the violence, journalists’ security was severely compromised. A report by the US-based National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI) said, “the quality of the January 7 election in Bangladesh was undermined by incidents of state, ruling party and opposition violence.” The report said that the pre-election environment, characterised by “zero-sum politics, violence among political actors, contracting civic space and worsening freedoms of expression and association” also weakened the quality of elections.

On polling day, many journalists were intimidated and denied entry to the polling stations. Most of the harassment and violence in Bangladesh was prompted by supporters of the ruling Awami League targeting reporters who were trying to cover electoral malpractice including booth capturing and vote rigging.

On election day, around 15 to 20 men wearing Awami League badges attacked seven journalists. These included MA Rahim, a correspondent for broadcaster Ananda TV; Rimon Hossain, a camera operator with Ananda TV; Masud Rana, a correspondent with online news portal enews71; Sumon Khan, a correspondent with broadcaster Mohona TV; Elias Bosunia, a correspondent with broadcaster Bangla TV; Minaj Islam, a correspondent with the Daily Vorer Chetona; and Hazrat Ali, a correspondent with the Dainik Dabanol. The reporters were covering an assault on independent candidate Ataur Rahman outside a polling station in northern Lalmonirhat district.

The hostility to media persons was widespread. Mohiuddin Modhu, a news presenter and correspondent for Jamuna Television, said that some men threw bricks at him when he tried to speak to a teenager who attempted to cast a ballot in Nawabganj.

Saif Bin Ayub, a sub-editor for the Daily Kalbela, was assaulted by about 30 men, when he was photographing alleged “ballot stuffing” by members of the ruling Awami League. The men pushed Bin Ayub against a wall, punched and kicked him in the abdomen and scratched him while forcibly removing his press identification card from around his neck. Ayub said that the police did not intervene while the men beat him for 15 minutes.

Sirajul Islam Rubel, a correspondent and Arafat Rahaman, a reporter for The Daily Star were ambushed by around two dozen men, when they tried to leave a Dhaka polling station after covering an alleged ballot stuffing attempt by Awami League supporters. The men grabbed their phones and deleted videos of the alleged incident and did not let them out until the police arrived.

In Pakistan, in December 2023, weeks before the elections, media in Balochistan, the western province of Pakistan which has seen separatist movements for decades, witnessed multiple curbs. Notably, half a dozen men raided the residence of Tahira Baloch, a renowned TV anchor and social media activist, in Quetta in the middle of the night.

Violence was a feature both before and during Pakistani elections too. Just a day before Pakistan was to go to the polls on February 8, 2024, two bombs went off in the electoral offices of independent candidates in Balochistan. This effect was chilling on the eve of the election.

There were instances of physical attacks in India as well. Data from the last five years from the Armed Conflict & Location Event Data Project reveals that there an increasing threat to journalists from physical attacks, mob violence, and violent demonstrations in India. In order to ensure journalists are prepared for both online and offline threats, CPJ’s Emergencies Response Team compiled a safety guide for journalists covering India’s election.

Supporters of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party brandishing a photo of former Prime Minister and PTI Founder Imran Khan blocks the Islamabad-Peshawar highway while protesting alleged election tampering in Peshawar on February 11, 2024. In the lead-up to Pakistan’s elections, news outlets were restricted from covering Khan’s speeches, PTI activities, or even identifying electoral candidates as running with PTI. Credit: Abdul Majeed / AFP

Weaponising the law

Over the past decade, Indian media has been subjected to a swathe of curbs of various kinds. Analysts highlight the process of delegitimisation and co-option of the mainstream media that has escalated since 2014. Sevanti Ninan, a media analyst and journalist, writes that the media was “denied access to government sources for primary news gathering, while the prime minister and his ministers used the state-owned media and social media to communicate with the citizenry.”

This atmosphere has led to independent and critical voices mostly shifting to digital-only publications. Thus, many observers believe that the government wants more power to control online media. Over the last few years, the government has passed laws and rules that would help it regulate the digital news portals. However, most of these laws are being challenged in courts.

The digital-only independent media is finding ways to collaborate and stand tall. In 2017, the Narendra Modi government introduced a funding system for political parties called ‘electoral bonds’, a system that critics called opaque and lacking accountability. These were promissory notes that businesses could purchase from the State Bank of India – a nationalised bank – and donate to a political party. In effect, this kept the identities of both buyer and receiver anonymous to the public.

On February 15, 2024, in a landmark judgement, the Supreme Court deemed the electoral bonds illegal and ordered that transaction details be made public. Data was released by the State Bank of India in spurts, which meant journalists had to sift through mountains of data and join the dots to figure out which companies had donated what and how much money to the various parties. Three independent news media websites – Newslaundry, The News Minute and Scroll – along with several independent reporters, joined hands to work on dozens of stories to expose the payback that political parties were getting from businesses in return for favours in an investigation they called “Project Electoral Bond”.

It is not the first time that such a collaboration came into being. In 2023, when major states in India went to the polls, Newslaundry, The News Minute, The Wire, Scroll and The Caravan came together to cover and analyse the election results. Not only have these newsrooms found it beneficial to collaborate, but it is also safer to stick together while working in this particularly unfriendly media environment.

On February 9, 2024, authorities used Section 69A of the Information Technology Act (amended in 2023), which allows it to block online access to reporting that poses a threat to the “security and integrity of India” to order The Caravan to take down a story about cases of murder and torture by the Indian army in the militarised northern territory of Jammu and Kashmir. It gave the independent narrative magazine 24 hours to remove the story. The Caravan has approached the court over the matter.

Authorities used law to target news organisations on several occasions. Eighteen media associations and organisations of journalists wrote an open letter to the Chief Justice of India, after the Delhi Police, which is overseen by the central government, raided and/or questioned 46 journalists, editors, writers, and professionals connected to the online news portal, Newsclick. Perhaps the outcry did not get the expected results. The founder and editor of NewsClick along with another staff member were subsequently arrested and charged under the oppressive anti-terror law, Unlawful Activities (prevention) Act, under allegations that the news portal was given money to spread pro-China propaganda.

Around the same time as the NewsClick saga was underway, about 35 per cent of Indians voted in November 2023 during the state elections in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana. A report by the Free Speech Collective on the state of freedom of expression in the five states revealed several instances of harassment, arrest, and even killing of journalists who reported on corruption or questioned authorities.

In January 2024, Sri Lanka passed the Online Safety Bill allowing the government to set up a commission that can order people and internet service providers to remove online posts deemed “prohibited statements,” without a clear definition of what that means.  Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis. The country declared bankruptcy in 2022 with more than USD 83 billion in debt and a significant chunk of it to foreign creditors such as China. Analysts say that the government would want a strong hold on the press to control the narrative while it attempts to overcome its dire economic state.

In September 2023, the country revised the Anti-Terrorism Bill after much public pressure. That bill is set to replace and repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which has been repeatedly used to jail and harass journalists for their work. But since the law doesn’t define “terrorism”, some analysts feel the law might be used to target journalists who ask uncomfortable questions to the authorities. With the upcoming presidential elections, the first since the economic crisis in Sri Lanka, a free press is crucial for the conduct of a free and fair election.

Activists with the People’s Revolution Party of Sri Lanka hold placards advocating for human rights and democratic freedoms at a Colombo demonstration on August 11, 2023, in the wake of the Island’s worst economic crisis. The government’s crackdown against the grass roots movement, or Aragalaya, has seen press freedom restricted and journalists harassed. Credit: Ishara S. Kodikara / AFP

Controlling the Internet

Internet shutdowns, website blocking and tampering with internet speeds have become more commonplace in the last few years. Elections periods were no exception.

Just a day before the Bangladeshi election, Tarique Choyon, a contributor to Daily Manab Zamin and one of the government’s leading media critics, said the newspaper’s website had become inaccessible in many places in Bangladesh. “We have no technical flaws at all,” he tweeted.  The website was reportedly back online the next day.

Since these were the first elections in Bangladesh since the 2018 polls, many media houses were fearful that the curbs on internet speeds would repeat, as they had in 2018. Thankfully, that was not the case.

Pakistan got what opposition parties in Bangladesh were seeking. After the country faced a democratic crisis last year, a caretaker government was appointed responsibility for the smooth conduct of the country’s elections. But that did not necessarily ensure that the elections went off uneventfully.

On the day of Pakistan’s elections, not only were mobile internet services shut down ‘temporarily’, but the Ministry of Interior also deftly stated that the shutdown was “inevitable”. Journalists reportedly faced difficulty in collecting and disseminating information during and after the ballots were cast.

Waqas Angaria, Karachi-based reporter with Geo News, told The News International that his plans of dissemination of results and providing real-time updates to the channel were disrupted. Internet monitor Netblocks also said real-time data showed internet blackouts were in effect in “multiple regions of Pakistan in addition to mobile network disruptions,” as reported by Dawn.

Such disruptions cut off crucial communication lines especially on a rather violent election day. That day, 51 documented attacks resulted in the killing of about 15 people in the country on that single day.

For elections to be fair, the media should be able to inform the public of different policies, candidates, manifestos and agendas. This forms the foundation of media’s responsibility towards its audiences. However, after Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan lost a confidence vote in parliament in April 2022, Pakistani media was subsequently banned from reporting his speeches and rallies. Later, in August 2023, Khan was imprisoned. As elections drew closer, restrictions on coverage of Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) became even more sweeping. News media heads of mainstream channels reportedly received calls from the army asking them to not identify candidates endorsed by the PTI or display the party flag while referring to such candidates.

Despite the ban on coverage of the PTI, violence on the national election day, and the various internet shutdowns, Imran Khan’s party won the plurality of seats, but not a majority – taking 93 of the 266 seats. This has been largely credited to the country’s robust social media. A young population took to the largely unregulated social media in Pakistan to express their support to Khan’s party, which used TikTok and YouTube to reach the 60 per cent of voters between the ages of 18 and 45.

On December 17, PTI reached over five million people in what they called a “virtual rally”. With their leader in jail, PTI members had to innovate ways for him to reach out to the larger public. In what might be considered controversial move, they used debateable AI [artificial intelligence] to generate his audio clip, interspersed with his older clips and played it in the virtual rally.

A clamp-down on mainstream media has given rise to digital-native platforms, such as RaftarTV,  NayaPakistan, and Siasat.pk, which have millions of subscribers on YouTube. “While a political outcome still remains in flux, it is clear that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s success can be attributed to its recognition of and connection with this tech-savvy demographic that may have felt overlooked and disenfranchised by political opponents and the mainstream media,” write Waqas Ejaz and Mitali Mukherjee.

Pakistan’s two dynastic parties, Sharif’s PML-N and the Bhutto family’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), came in second and third place, with 75 and 54 legislative seats respectively.

PML-N and PPP joined together to form a coalition government and, surprisingly, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was pushed aside for his brother Shehbaz to become the country’s new prime minister – reported to be a more palatable options for Pakistan’s military because of his consistent pro-establishment stance.

In India, social media has been a double-edged sword. While women politicians, especially from opposition parties have been trolled, it has also served to uncover stories that mainstream media would otherwise not pay heed to. For instance, a political leader was found sleeping on a bed of currency notes. The picture went viral and mainstream publications were forced to take note.

Restricting international oversight

Given that India has been courting western democracies, image building is crucial. In a move to caution international media, a notice was served to French journalist Vanessa Dougnac withdrawing her Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) status because of allegedly “malicious and critical” articles. Dougnac, who has been based in India since 2001 and is married to an Indian citizen, wrote regularly in the newsweekly Le Point and the newspapers Le Soir and La Croix. This was clearly a case of intolerance towards dissenting views. The Ministry of Home Affairs issued a notification in March 2021, requiring OCI cardholders to obtain special permission for journalistic activities.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s South Asia bureau chief Avani Dias left India on April 19, 2024, after being told her visa would not be extended because her reporting “crossed a line”. She was also told that her election accreditation would not be approved because of a government directive.

Similarly, in a deliberate attempt to limit international oversight, Bangladeshi authorities refused to issue visas to journalists from many leading international media outlets, including BBC News, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Al Jazeera ahead of the polls. Some were asked to sign a statement that Bangladeshi authorities had the right to approve their text and images and ensure that their work did not harm the “national image” in exchange for a visa.

In Maldives, the amendment proposed by the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) in March 2023, to Sections 41(a) and 41(b) of the General Elections Act to require any reporter covering the elections to work for a media outlet or broadcasting service registered with the government and approved by the Election Commission was met with expressions of concern. The amendment was criticised by the International Federation of Journalists, the Maldives Journalists’ Association (MJA) and Transparency Maldives, who said the proposed amendment would “exclude freelance journalists and foreign correspondents from election monitoring practices”. With deteriorating press freedom, this was interpreted as a move to unduly control press coverage of the elections.

Voters queue up to cast their ballot outside a polling station in Thimphu on January 9, 2024. While Bhutan’s elections were celebrated due to a peaceful transition of power, lingering barriers to official sources of information have raised questions over press freedom in the Himalayan kingdom. Credit: Money Sharma / AFP

The “bright spot”

Bhutan went to polls on January 9, 2024, to elect members to its lower house, called the National Assembly. Analysts saw the elections as a “bright spot” thanks to a smooth transfer of power. But there are questions about how informed the public was about who they were voting for because in 2023, Bhutan’s Press Freedom Index dropped by a whopping 57 places in one year.

Despite some promising democratic trends since 2008 when the country transitioned from an absolute monarchy to a democracy, the media has continued to complain about barriers to its functioning such as access to official sources of information. As a result, the lack of transparent governance and a secretive bureaucracy continues to perpetuate a culture of secrecy and distrust of the press in the South Asian kingdom.

The world over, a rise in authoritarian governments such as in Turkey, Russia and Argentina has put the question of free flow of information and the right to know to the front and centre. The media is contending with strong controls over information flows, despite the relative freedom afforded by social media.

Especially in South Asia, which houses one in five people of the global population, with diverse societies and complex histories, it is imperative that media and media workers are able to hold power to account. Without effective institutional safeguards, the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) to ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms will remain a pipe dream. Election time, when democracy is in action, is a litmus test for a free and independent press, and the experiences in South Asia in the past year show exactly how it is facing immense challenges on this front.

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