Elected autocrats

Bangladesh, as it is today, exhibits the hallmarks of an electoral democracy or illiberal democracy and this is the problem. Ever since regular free and fair elections became the rule following the exit of a long standing autocratic government in 1989, it has had successive governments claiming democratic credentials. But each fell far short of achieving the qualities expected of a democratic government in the full sense of the term. Thus, parliament's dysfunctional nature with the opposition remaining absent from its proceedings for unusually long periods appeared to be the prime ill characteristic of successive parliaments in Bangladesh. Successive parliaments in Bangladesh became like single-party institutions for lack of real participation in their proceedings by the opposition. The elected governments could, thus, behave like elected dictators in the absence of the opposition in parliament. The elected governments have gone on behaving like autocrats in varying degrees and seemed not dedicated to the true cause of democracy in all its manifestations. What we witnessed so far in Bangladesh was a parade of governments one after another led by political parties that espoused high democratic ideals before going to power but betrayed the same most insensitively on going to power. Thus, what they could deliver at best was illiberal democracy or only the trappings of a democracy with the heart and spirit of real democracy missing from the same. Abdur Rahim Khilgaon Chowdhury Para, Dhaka