Depoliticisation of the armed forces is an imperative to sustain and strengthen the country's democracy and development, speakers said at a seminar yesterday.

All successive governments had used the armed forces for political ends since the country's independence, and none of them, including the present one, has encouraged professionalism in the defence services, they said.

“Civil bureaucracy had been politicised long ago. The armed forces was politicised later leading to demoralisation of their members,” Akbar Ali Khan, former adviser to a caretaker government, said at the seminar.

Centre for Sustainable Development organised the seminar “civil military relationship and democratic governance in Bangladesh” in a hotel in the capital.

Akbar said the armed forces cannot interfere in the country's politics if good governance remains in place.

Military intervention or martial law cannot be prevented by mere enactment of law if democracy does not flourish in the country, he said.

"Political problems should be resolved politically. Likewise, military problems should also be solved militarily. The balance of power between the civil administration and the armed forces is absent in our country for lack of good governance,” said the former adviser.

Abul Hasan Chowdhury, former state minister for foreign affairs, said professionalism could not be established in the armed forces for political intervention of two major political parties—Awami League and BNP.

Mahbub Ullah, professor at Dhaka University, said people of India or even Pakistan take pride in their armed forces but Bangladeshis do not really take any pride in their military forces.

Maj Gen (retd) Fazle Elahi Akbar, BNP chairperson's chief coordinator on defence and security issues, Shamsher Mobin Chowdhury, vice chairman of BNP, and AG Mahmud, ex-chief of the air force, also spoke.

Bangladesh Kalyan Party Chief Maj Gen (retd) Syed Muhammad Ibrahim presented the keynote paper.