South Asian families

The heredity principle at work

 AT PENPOINT

The election of Tarique Rehman as Prime Minister of Bangladesh means that the country is once again where it was in 1996, with a PM who is entering the House for the first time, with no question of him or her having held any of the three great offices of state. This might mean the opportunity of a new start, but it might also show the lack of experience at the head of the government.

It shows also that, in Bangladesh as much as in other countries, the hereditary principle applies. Tarique Rehman is the son of a former President as well, and though his mother had headed the Bangladesh Nationalist Party since its founding in 1985, he too had been in exile for the last 17 years, which might demonstrate his commitment to democracy, but which is hardly any preparation for the rigours of office and the problems facing a nation.

The ascent to the Prime Ministership in the UK has been supposed to be an alternation between Opposition and government, and while in government, to gradually ascend from junior office to senior, to culminate in one of the great offices of state (Home Office, Foreign Office, Chancellery of the Exchequer). Winston Churchill is one of those who fitted that framework, starting as one of the youngest ever Home Secretaries, being only 34 in 1908. After having been sacked as First Lord of the Admiralty after botching the Gaillipoli campaign, he returned to the Tory Party, where in 1922 he became Colonial Secretary (which was the nearest he got to the Foreign Office). After the 1928 election, Baldwin offered him the Exchequer, probably in the hope that he would not accept. But he did, and led the UK right into the Great Depression. It is perhaps worth mentioning, that, unlike several British PMs before and since, he never held junior office.

Be that as it may, he was an experienced hand, well acquainted with all aspects of the UK’s problems, and the Labour Party refused to come into a National Government, unless he headed it. Labour itself was to have one person ready to be Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan, who had at one time or another held all three great offices of state, all under the man he succeeded, Harold Wilson. Callaghan was head of what became a minority government, and faced off the OPEC oil boycott. He made sure the Parliament, unusually for those days, ran for virtually the full five years, because the writing was fairly visible on the wall: the 1975 electoral disaster than began the Thatcher years.

Apart from Elizabeth Truss and Boris Johnson, both Foreign Secretaries, and Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer, British PMs no longer have held one of the great offices, and the examples mentioned have all gone down in flames soon after taking office. Pakistan has tended towards provincial strongmen rather than holders of one of the great offices, though it should be remembered that its first PM, Liaquat Ali Khan, had actually served as Finance Minister in the last Viceroy’s Cabinet, with Nehru as Prime Minister.

One reason why the heredity principle is more applicable to parliamentary systems is that the machine developed over several elections to contest a constituency needs a successor when the candidate dies or is too old. Who better than a son or daughter? And when the parliamentary system demands a national figure for constituency figures to gather around, again, who better than a son or daughter? In presidential systems a national machine is not that easy, though the election of Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Jomo Kenyatta, as Kenya’s President, showed that it was possible.

 There is a certain linkage discernible between Hasina Wajid and the UK, through her niece, Tulip Siddique, the granddaughter of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujeebur Rehman has been an MP since 2008, and was given junior ministerial office in the Starmer government formed after Labour won in 2024, but her involvement in a couple of scandals in Bangladesh, not to mention her being given a £190,000 flat by a Bangladeshi develope, led her to resign.

It is perhaps worth noting at this point that Tarique Rehman too has spent his exile in the UK.because of that enforced absence from Bangladesh, his only child, Zarnaz Zaima Rehman, received her entire education in the UK, where she is a barrister. Her only participation in the politics of either country, has been as a campaignervfor her father in the election just concluded.

The path to the Prime Ministership has been more orthodox in India, where holders of the office have been either Home Minister or Finance Minister, or sometimes both. In Pakistan, only Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had held any of the great offices of state, the Foreign Ministry. Pakistan of late tended to see Punjab CMs becoming PM. The two most prominent examples are the Sharif brothers, Nawaz and Shehbaz. Nawaz is the clearer example, for Shehbaz served as MNA in 1900-3, only later becoming CM, in 1997, but Nawaz moved directly from the Punjab CM’s Secretariat to the PMO in 1990.

Tarique Rehman’s ascent to the Prime Ministership is not so much as whether he has held the right offices, or any offices at all. It is about hereditary claims. That is supposed to b e one of advantages of democracy, that representatives and leaders are not thrust upon a people by accident of birth. Perhaps because the claim to supreme office is not based on performance in a lesser office, claimants need not have held any of the great offices of state.

He is not the first of the ‘sons of widows’ who have a hereditary right from both father and mother, because the mother had been forced into politics because of her own widowhood. Srimavo Bandaranaike was widowed when her husband, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, was assassinated, and she then went on to become the first woman PM anywhere in the world. Her daughter Chandrika took up her mantle, not her son Anura, though he remained active in politics, becoming Speaker of the Sri Lankan Parliament.

That is a little like Pakistani’s own widow, Nusrat Bhutto, who passed the inheritance to her daughter, not her son Murtaza. There we also have Bilawal waiting to take office, his mother also a PM, his father also a President. He himself has been Foreign Minister. If he ever becomes PM, he will have both experience and pedigree, certainly more than Tarique Rehman, even though he shares with him the privilege of having had a PM for a mother and a President for a father.

India has still got the longest-lasting dynasty in the Nehrus, with Jawahir Lal the first of three to have served as PM, with Indira his daughter and Rajiv his grandson succeeding to the office. However, none of Indira’s grandchildren have become PM, though Rahul has come close, and has been Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.

In the last analysis, the Prime Ministership need not fall to someone who has ticked off all the boxes. In the Subcontinent, heredity plays more of a role than democracy intended that it should. It is not just the progenitor who wants the child to be the successor, but it is the followers. In Imran’s case it is not clear. With such a strong personality cult, the succession should devolve almost naturally upon Imran’s sons. Their being twins does not help matters. Further, they are being kept away by their mother. The claimants are not just Imran’s sisters and their children, but his present wife and his stepchildren. Perhaps such confusion is inevitable once the heredity principle is accepted.

One reason why the heredity principle is more applicable to parliamentary systems is that the machine developed over several elections to contest a constituency needs a successor when the candidate dies or is too old. Who better than a son or daughter? And when the parliamentary system demands a national figure for constituency figures to gather around, again, who better than a son or daughter? In presidential systems a national machine is not that easy, though the election of Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Jomo Kenyatta, as Kenya’s President, showed that it was possible.