Bangladesh is an extremely populated (140 million people inhabit in a land of 144,000 sq.km) and
a scarce-resourced society where widespread disparity and discrimination coexist in dealing with the
seniors/superiors vis-à-vis the juniors/inferiors which in turn foster intolerance, enmity, rivalry and
vindication across the society. No substantial space is left for the juniors/inferiors to breathe in and
breathe out in the social and political sphere. The tradition of accommodating the junior/opposition and
sharing power with others is virtually absent in Bangladesh. The superior groups/parties on the other
hand tend to suffer from loosing their predominant positions and thus resort to all sorts of oppressive
measures to weaken and destroy the opposition’s strength. The junior parties also take on all sorts of
legal or illegal measures to upset the superiors’ position and occupy it. In Bangladesh, which is a low trust
society, the fighting/conflicting parties are sceptical to each other’s intention and have no respect for each
other and are not habituated to following the rules of the game accordingly. The “winner-takes all”
attitudes of the superiors is reflected not only in behaviour of the superior towards the juniors but also in
setting rules for running all the major institutions in the country including the electoral system (plurality),
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the parliament, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the armed forces, local government, media and even the
civil society. The rules are heavily biased in favour of the powerful/superior parties/groups in the society.
Moreover, due to lack of trust across society, symbiotic relation has loomed in a small coterie group made
up of the politicians, businessmen, parliamentarians, civil-military bureaucrats to serve the interest of one
another. Thus there is no interested party (barring the opposition) left in the country that can strive to hold
a brake on the executive from indulging in corruption and call the executive into account. Thus the
country’s destructive political culture which is premised on the dominant hierarchical structure and values
of the society is a serious threat towards ushering democratic ethos among the citizenry as well as a
serious hindrance to the strengthening and consolidation of democratic governance in the Bangladesh.