By TON Bangladesh

Bangladesh has called the Padma Bridge the countries longest bridge a sign of national pride. But its excessive cost and World Bank concerns over corruption have raised questions over the project. Bangladesh is slated for graduation from the status of “Least Developed Country” to “Developing Country.”

Bangladesh has just experiencing an economic free-fall. Bangladeshi mainstream media and social media are full of the assumptions about the country’s impending collapse like a Sri Lanka South Asian country. Bangladesh’s GDP is about the size of the Pakistani and Sri Lankan economies combined. Bangladesh’s foreign currency reserves are $39bn, more than twice the $18bn of those two neighbors together.

Bangladesh’s total debt-to-GDP ratio stands at just over 31 percent, matched with 119 percent for Sri Lanka. Bangladesh has a higher per capita GDP than India and is outperforming other major South Asian nations in key socioeconomic metrics.

However, there are three key similarities between the Bangladesh and Sri Lanka .These are despotism under hereditary rule; corruption and cronyism; and debt-fuelled narcissism projects.Like the former president family, the Sri Lankan political dynasty that plunged the country into its recent wilderness of despair, Bangladesh has been ruled for the past 14 years by the Awami League party, led by the family of current Prime Minister.

The current PM of Bangladesh returned to power in 2018 via an election where the country’s security apparatus allegedly full ballot boxes the night previous to the vote. The ruling Awami League won 96 percent of the seats.

Over the years, both the former president of Sri Lanka family and the current ruling family of Bangladesh have derived their political inheritance from their ancestor’s wartime leadership. In 2009, then-President Sri Lankan and his brother, defense minister were in charge when the Sri Lankan government decisively defeated the Tamil Tiger guerilla fighters in Sri Lanka’s decades-old civil war amid allegations of war crimes. Likewise, the current Bangladesh PM father led Bangladesh’s war of independence against Pakistan half a century ago.

Selling their family’s wartime audacity to their poor and needy people, both the current ruling family of Bangladesh and the former president of Sri Lanka established fiefdoms, where almost every living member of their respective clans got helms of power.

The former president of Sri Lankan ran Sri Lanka like a “family company. The president and his brother prime minister and their third brother was a cabinet minister. Their children also held ministerial positions concurrently. The rule of brothers’ crumbled last month.

The current Bangladesh’s Prime Minister has followed a similar pattern. Her daughter seen as her heir-apparent, attends state functions and meetings with her mother. Even the expatriate son of the prime minister, enjoys the title of ICT adviser. The prime minister’s sister nephews, nieces, cousins and their children are delegated with key responsibilities ranging from handling propaganda organizations, diplomatic and donor relationships, military affairs, parliamentary memberships and running business multinationals.

Such control over the state machinery and private businesses always breeds autocracy and disrespect towards public opinion and political opponents. That, in turn, results rampant corruption and cronyism. That’s what happened with the former president and his family in Sri Lanka, where protesters found richness in the presidential palace. That is also the reality in Bangladesh under the current ruling family of Bangladesh.

The former president of Sri Lanka built a $1bn port that rarely saw any ships, a $210m airport where scarcely any planes landed and a 35,000-seat cricket stadium. Bangladeshis are now busy comparing their own white elephants with Sri Lanka’s. While the government has introduced austerity actions, including power rationing, and police have fired upon and even killed those protesting against price hikes, Bangladesh is going ahead with the construction of a $140m cricket stadium bearing the prime minister’s name.

The current Bangladeshi government is busy constructing several multibillion-dollar mega projects, including a $12bn nuclear power plant in Rooppur, which is significantly more expensive than similar projects in other countries. When the World Bank declined to fund Bangladesh’s recently completed Padma Bridge, citing corruption, Bangladesh self-funded and finished the 6km (3.7-mile) long bridge after spending three times the initial budget ($3.8bn vs $1.2bn).

Within about a month of opening the Padma Bridge amid much delight, the country anxiously wrote letters to the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Asian Development Bank for loans to keep the economy afloat amid a balance of payment crisis due to increasing oil prices.

It is possible the government acted sensibly by preemptive talk to IMF. After all, the Bangladesh government must have seen in Sri Lanka how economic stress can finish an autocrat government.

That is why the people of Bangladesh see unnerving parallels with Sri Lanka, as the similarities of corruption-prone vanity projects between the countries are same. Seeing the collapse of Sri Lanka’s debt-driven, dynastic authoritarianism, the Bangladeshis government is not unreasonable in their anxiety.