Good governance in Bangladesh and my cogitation
Saturday, 11 August 2007
Jubaida Raushan Ara
In Bangladesh, all the internal and external actors of politics, administration and development are emphasizing the need for good governance. A dramatic change has come in public administration and the paradigm shift towards good governance and sustainable developments. Day by day, the intellectuals, bureaucrats and civil society members are accepting the spirit of the concept and conceptualizing it in their own experience and environment because the actual picture of governance in our country does not prove to be good and satisfactory. Accountability of the government and the administration is at bay. The rule of law and a sound judicial system have not yet been ensured. Democratization and human rights are being disrupted in many ways.
Governance
Simply put, 'governance' means the process of decision is implemented (or not implemented). In general sense, governance means exercising political power to manage a nation affair. Today, governance is seen as a reflection of the role of the state in giving direction to a country and political regime for development.
According to Land-el-Mills and Serageldin, governance may be taken to denote "how people are ruled, how the affairs of a state are administrated and regulated; it refers to a nation's system of politics and how this functions in relation to public administration and law."
According to World Bank booklet reports, governance is the "manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country's economic and social resources for development."
Governance can be viewed both in positive and negative terms -
(1) Good governance and
(2) Poor governance.
Good governance means an ideal governing system that is inevitable for political, economic, social and cultural development of a country. It is the ideal orientation of a state that works best to achieve self-reliance, sustainable development and social justice.
According to V.K. Chopra, good governance is, "a system of governance that is able to unambiguously identify the basic values of the society where values are economic, political and socio-culture issues including human rights, and pursue these values through an accountable and honest administration."
The elements of good governance are-
Accountability-both political and financial;
Transparency- both political and financial;
Enforcement of the rule of law, including fair and accessible legal and judicial system;
The promotion of democracy and open pluralistic societies;
The promotion of respect for human rights;
The promotion of independent media and the dissemination of information;
Anti-corruption initiatives;
Participation of citizens in decision making and implementation;
Citizen satisfaction;
Efforts to reduce excessive military expenditure;
An overall caring and humane ambience promoting an equalitarian and equitous social and economic order.
A World Bank booklet cogently summarized the major symptoms of poor governance. These are:
Failure to make a clear separation between what is public and what is private, hence, a tendency to direct public resources for private gain ;
Failure to establish a predictable framework of law and government behavior conducive to development or arbitrariness in the application of rule of laws ;
Executive rules, regulations, licensing requirements and so forth, which impede functioning of markets and encourage rent seeking ;
Priorities, inconsistent with development, resulting in a misallocation of resources ;
Excessively narrowly based or non-transparent decision making ;
Excessive costs ;
Poor service to the public and ;
Failure to achieve the aims of policy.
The Way Towards Good Governance in Bangladesh
My cogitation towards a good governing system in Bangladesh contains the following steps need to be taken immediately.
Changes in Election Commission:
The weakness of the Election Commission and its lack of independence have been so inherent and endemic that Bangladesh Constitution needed the 13th amendment in order to introduce provision for caretaker government. Besides the provision for caretaker government during the general elections there is also need for-
An independent and neutral body having its credibility on its own right beyond any reproach;
Fund and budget of the EC;
Staff and personnel to be recruited by the commission itself;
Support to training institutes;
Improving voter education programmes;
Computerization of the electoral roll;
Independence of the media in the election process;
Strengthening the capacity of EC to enable it to perform its role effectively.
Enforcement of rule of law:
To establish the rule of law in Bangladesh the following steps should be taken:
Except the mode of appointment the independence of our higher judiciary is ensured. But the independence of lower judiciary, particularly of the magistrate courts is not ensured because these courts are run by the executive. So, to ensure its independence it should be separated from the executive.
The independence of other lower courts can be ensured by amending the Article 116 to the following effect:
"The control (including the power of posting, promotion and grants of leave) and discipline of persons employed in the judicial service and judicial magistrates shall vest in the Supreme Court".
The Article 33 of Bangladesh Constitution allows the government to use the provision of preventive detention in peace time. As a result, a huge number of persons are detained every year without trial purely for political purpose. So this provision should be reformed to be applied only in time of emergency.
Article 93 of the Constitution allows the President to promulgate ordinances anytime during the recesses of parliament sessions. And in practice a huge number of ordinances are promulgated bypassing the parliament. Ordinance-made laws are fully undemocratic since they are made by the executive almost in an unrestricted way. These laws are, therefore, contrary to the concept of rule of law. So this provision is also needed to be reformed so that it cannot be used unless there occurs any emergency situation like national crisis, national calamity, severe economic deflation etc.
Article 141A of the Constitution empowers the president to declare emergency whenever he wishes. But by declaring emergency in peace time the government can suspend fundamental rights and suppress the opposition movement. This amounts to avow arbitrary exercise of power on the part of the government which is contradictory to the concept of rule of law. So this provision is also needed to be reformed, so that it can only be applied in war time situations only.
Reform in public administration and bureaucracy:
To remove the difficulties and institutionalize this bureaucracy and make public administration accountable following measures should be taken immediately:
Standing committees on Ministries should be institutionalized and allowed to work independently in full swing so that the bureaucrats at every Ministry come under the direct of parliament.
The constitutional independence and autonomy for the CAG (Comptroller and Auditor-General) must be ensured so that it can independently work in the way to make bureaucrats accountable in respect of financial matter and to monitor their financial responsibilities;
A department of Ombudsman should immediately be created which will work as an all-time watchdog against maladministration, red-tapism and inefficiency in the bureaucracy;
Unconstitutional laws dealing with the functions and formation of constitutional bodies like CAG, PSC, local government, EC etc must be replaced by democratic laws allowing them to independently in furtherance of better administrative accountability.
The larger the government, the wider is its reach. The wider the reach of the executive, more the likelihood of public harassment; more the likelihood of bureaucratic corruption. Government has, therefore should be shrunk; in the present context where multi-national foreign investment is involved in the exploration of oil and gas, and the generation of power, there cannot be any justification for restricting our own private sector from importing and distributing various products like petroleum etc. monopolies such as BPC (Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation) which bring no public benefit should be abolished. There are many other instances where the state must be sold back. Reduction in state intervention should be the prime principle of reform. Whenever possible government executive should be branched out to agencies and the private sector is allowed to participate in creating a competitive atmosphere.
The functioning of the PSC must be strengthened and it should be chaired by an expert opposition MP particularly one who had been previously a Finance Minister. Proper functioning of the PSC will ensure the financial responsibility of bureaucrats in every ministry;
Reports of the PSC must be dealt with a standing committee as in parliament and the compliance of the commission's report must be ensured through the scrutiny of the committee system;
To control delegated law making by the bureaucrats a standing committee should be set up and a instrument act should be made;
Institutionalizing local government:
To institutionalize local government following initiatives should be taken-
Ø In accordance with the provisions of Article 11, 59 and 60 of the Constitution local government institutions should be set up for ensuring people's participation.
Ø Every tier of local government should be autonomous and maximum devolution of power to be made to the local government;
Local governments institutions should be made free from government interference except audit and inceptions of funds provided by the governments;
In accordance with the provisions in Article 59(1) of the Constitution the local government administrations and officials must be vested in control of the local government and not under the control of the central government as present provision provide, because a centralized administration tends by nature to be more bureaucratic;
The term of office of chairman of local bodies should be reduced to 2 years instead of 5 years to make the office of chairman less attractive to moneyed candidates, but more attractive to dedicated persons.
Steps to solve political problems:
Political problems are supposed to be the root cause of poor governance in Bangladesh. Because political parties who ultimately governs the country contains the following problems:
There are more than 100 political parties in Bangladesh but very few of them have definite ideology or programmes to be followed by supporters and future generations. Though one or two parties have ideologies and programmes, the leaders often defy them for their own gain.
Each major party is headed by a person who is omnipotent in the management of the party, including the formation of central and executive committees. The constitutions of most of the parties are absolutely monolithic in nature.
The basic reason behind almost all the problems is the illiterate and politically unconscious people behind the scene who are supplying the real force into the body polity of Bangladesh. To get rid of this problem we need to make our people educated and politically conscious. And to do that here again comes the question of dedicated leadership.
So for the sake of democracy in the country the following steps should be taken by leaders-
The hereditary nature of leadership should be abolished and the party constitution should be amended to allow change in leadership after each specified term;
The party structure and committees should be filled only by elections and this will encourage as well as develop leadership from the grassroots- level;
The post of party president and the leader of the parliamentary party should not be held by the same person. Ministers must be barred from holding any party office. This will ensure the entity of the party as an institution of democracy on one hand, and on the other, the party will be in a position to exercise a sort of control over the government or the parliamentary party so that they do not deviate from their party mandate or manifesto;
What is urgently needed now is to play an effective role by some of our MPs or political leaders who are really sincere, educated and devoted to the institutionalization of parliamentary democracy; they should from their respective parties, whenever and whatever way possible, consistently create a sort of genuine pressure so that Khaleda-Hasina cannot take any arbitrary or dictatorial actions to destroy democracy.
Although a lot of measures need to be taken for ensuring good governance. I hope, if sincere efforts can be taken for implementing the above-mentioned steps then good governance will be ensured. On the other extreme, the opposition, civil society and social groups and organizations also have the moral obligations to help and cooperate with the governments in this juncture.
From socio-economic point of view Bangladesh is an underdeveloped country. There is a plethora of problems like over-population and its rapid growth, illiteracy, poverty, diseases, malnutrition, unemployment etc. but almost all these problems have been created by our leaders. On the other hand, there are huge possibilities and factors in favor of industrialization and economic growth in the country. Many third world countries started their journey towards good governance and economic with fragile institutions as was in the case of Bangladesh. But these like Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia have been able to make success in a comparatively shorter period. But Bangladesh still lags behind. Despite the existence of all ample possibilities for both political and economic development we are still struggling because we couldn't get an honest and far-sighted leader who can guide the nation with devoted spirit into a proper direction. The Malaysian ex-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad is a classic example of a prudent and intelligent leader; he transformed Malaysia from rudimentary stage of this 'tiger' status ensuring good governance. Again, South Korea's economy was no better than ours in the 60s. Its per capita income was lower than that of Bangladesh in 1953. But by virtue of solid leadership skill, it has surpassed us long ago. South Korea achieved tremendous development in General Chun du Huan's and Rae Tu's regime during 1980-93. Even then, Mr. Chun was not forgiven for his overwhelming corruption. He was sentenced to death. This is a good lesson for Bangladesh where public leaders work for their own gain and scot-free even after corruption.
— NewsNetwork
In Bangladesh, all the internal and external actors of politics, administration and development are emphasizing the need for good governance. A dramatic change has come in public administration and the paradigm shift towards good governance and sustainable developments. Day by day, the intellectuals, bureaucrats and civil society members are accepting the spirit of the concept and conceptualizing it in their own experience and environment because the actual picture of governance in our country does not prove to be good and satisfactory. Accountability of the government and the administration is at bay. The rule of law and a sound judicial system have not yet been ensured. Democratization and human rights are being disrupted in many ways.
Governance
Simply put, 'governance' means the process of decision is implemented (or not implemented). In general sense, governance means exercising political power to manage a nation affair. Today, governance is seen as a reflection of the role of the state in giving direction to a country and political regime for development.
According to Land-el-Mills and Serageldin, governance may be taken to denote "how people are ruled, how the affairs of a state are administrated and regulated; it refers to a nation's system of politics and how this functions in relation to public administration and law."
According to World Bank booklet reports, governance is the "manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country's economic and social resources for development."
Governance can be viewed both in positive and negative terms -
(1) Good governance and
(2) Poor governance.
Good governance means an ideal governing system that is inevitable for political, economic, social and cultural development of a country. It is the ideal orientation of a state that works best to achieve self-reliance, sustainable development and social justice.
According to V.K. Chopra, good governance is, "a system of governance that is able to unambiguously identify the basic values of the society where values are economic, political and socio-culture issues including human rights, and pursue these values through an accountable and honest administration."
The elements of good governance are-
Accountability-both political and financial;
Transparency- both political and financial;
Enforcement of the rule of law, including fair and accessible legal and judicial system;
The promotion of democracy and open pluralistic societies;
The promotion of respect for human rights;
The promotion of independent media and the dissemination of information;
Anti-corruption initiatives;
Participation of citizens in decision making and implementation;
Citizen satisfaction;
Efforts to reduce excessive military expenditure;
An overall caring and humane ambience promoting an equalitarian and equitous social and economic order.
A World Bank booklet cogently summarized the major symptoms of poor governance. These are:
Failure to make a clear separation between what is public and what is private, hence, a tendency to direct public resources for private gain ;
Failure to establish a predictable framework of law and government behavior conducive to development or arbitrariness in the application of rule of laws ;
Executive rules, regulations, licensing requirements and so forth, which impede functioning of markets and encourage rent seeking ;
Priorities, inconsistent with development, resulting in a misallocation of resources ;
Excessively narrowly based or non-transparent decision making ;
Excessive costs ;
Poor service to the public and ;
Failure to achieve the aims of policy.
The Way Towards Good Governance in Bangladesh
My cogitation towards a good governing system in Bangladesh contains the following steps need to be taken immediately.
Changes in Election Commission:
The weakness of the Election Commission and its lack of independence have been so inherent and endemic that Bangladesh Constitution needed the 13th amendment in order to introduce provision for caretaker government. Besides the provision for caretaker government during the general elections there is also need for-
An independent and neutral body having its credibility on its own right beyond any reproach;
Fund and budget of the EC;
Staff and personnel to be recruited by the commission itself;
Support to training institutes;
Improving voter education programmes;
Computerization of the electoral roll;
Independence of the media in the election process;
Strengthening the capacity of EC to enable it to perform its role effectively.
Enforcement of rule of law:
To establish the rule of law in Bangladesh the following steps should be taken:
Except the mode of appointment the independence of our higher judiciary is ensured. But the independence of lower judiciary, particularly of the magistrate courts is not ensured because these courts are run by the executive. So, to ensure its independence it should be separated from the executive.
The independence of other lower courts can be ensured by amending the Article 116 to the following effect:
"The control (including the power of posting, promotion and grants of leave) and discipline of persons employed in the judicial service and judicial magistrates shall vest in the Supreme Court".
The Article 33 of Bangladesh Constitution allows the government to use the provision of preventive detention in peace time. As a result, a huge number of persons are detained every year without trial purely for political purpose. So this provision should be reformed to be applied only in time of emergency.
Article 93 of the Constitution allows the President to promulgate ordinances anytime during the recesses of parliament sessions. And in practice a huge number of ordinances are promulgated bypassing the parliament. Ordinance-made laws are fully undemocratic since they are made by the executive almost in an unrestricted way. These laws are, therefore, contrary to the concept of rule of law. So this provision is also needed to be reformed so that it cannot be used unless there occurs any emergency situation like national crisis, national calamity, severe economic deflation etc.
Article 141A of the Constitution empowers the president to declare emergency whenever he wishes. But by declaring emergency in peace time the government can suspend fundamental rights and suppress the opposition movement. This amounts to avow arbitrary exercise of power on the part of the government which is contradictory to the concept of rule of law. So this provision is also needed to be reformed, so that it can only be applied in war time situations only.
Reform in public administration and bureaucracy:
To remove the difficulties and institutionalize this bureaucracy and make public administration accountable following measures should be taken immediately:
Standing committees on Ministries should be institutionalized and allowed to work independently in full swing so that the bureaucrats at every Ministry come under the direct of parliament.
The constitutional independence and autonomy for the CAG (Comptroller and Auditor-General) must be ensured so that it can independently work in the way to make bureaucrats accountable in respect of financial matter and to monitor their financial responsibilities;
A department of Ombudsman should immediately be created which will work as an all-time watchdog against maladministration, red-tapism and inefficiency in the bureaucracy;
Unconstitutional laws dealing with the functions and formation of constitutional bodies like CAG, PSC, local government, EC etc must be replaced by democratic laws allowing them to independently in furtherance of better administrative accountability.
The larger the government, the wider is its reach. The wider the reach of the executive, more the likelihood of public harassment; more the likelihood of bureaucratic corruption. Government has, therefore should be shrunk; in the present context where multi-national foreign investment is involved in the exploration of oil and gas, and the generation of power, there cannot be any justification for restricting our own private sector from importing and distributing various products like petroleum etc. monopolies such as BPC (Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation) which bring no public benefit should be abolished. There are many other instances where the state must be sold back. Reduction in state intervention should be the prime principle of reform. Whenever possible government executive should be branched out to agencies and the private sector is allowed to participate in creating a competitive atmosphere.
The functioning of the PSC must be strengthened and it should be chaired by an expert opposition MP particularly one who had been previously a Finance Minister. Proper functioning of the PSC will ensure the financial responsibility of bureaucrats in every ministry;
Reports of the PSC must be dealt with a standing committee as in parliament and the compliance of the commission's report must be ensured through the scrutiny of the committee system;
To control delegated law making by the bureaucrats a standing committee should be set up and a instrument act should be made;
Institutionalizing local government:
To institutionalize local government following initiatives should be taken-
Ø In accordance with the provisions of Article 11, 59 and 60 of the Constitution local government institutions should be set up for ensuring people's participation.
Ø Every tier of local government should be autonomous and maximum devolution of power to be made to the local government;
Local governments institutions should be made free from government interference except audit and inceptions of funds provided by the governments;
In accordance with the provisions in Article 59(1) of the Constitution the local government administrations and officials must be vested in control of the local government and not under the control of the central government as present provision provide, because a centralized administration tends by nature to be more bureaucratic;
The term of office of chairman of local bodies should be reduced to 2 years instead of 5 years to make the office of chairman less attractive to moneyed candidates, but more attractive to dedicated persons.
Steps to solve political problems:
Political problems are supposed to be the root cause of poor governance in Bangladesh. Because political parties who ultimately governs the country contains the following problems:
There are more than 100 political parties in Bangladesh but very few of them have definite ideology or programmes to be followed by supporters and future generations. Though one or two parties have ideologies and programmes, the leaders often defy them for their own gain.
Each major party is headed by a person who is omnipotent in the management of the party, including the formation of central and executive committees. The constitutions of most of the parties are absolutely monolithic in nature.
The basic reason behind almost all the problems is the illiterate and politically unconscious people behind the scene who are supplying the real force into the body polity of Bangladesh. To get rid of this problem we need to make our people educated and politically conscious. And to do that here again comes the question of dedicated leadership.
So for the sake of democracy in the country the following steps should be taken by leaders-
The hereditary nature of leadership should be abolished and the party constitution should be amended to allow change in leadership after each specified term;
The party structure and committees should be filled only by elections and this will encourage as well as develop leadership from the grassroots- level;
The post of party president and the leader of the parliamentary party should not be held by the same person. Ministers must be barred from holding any party office. This will ensure the entity of the party as an institution of democracy on one hand, and on the other, the party will be in a position to exercise a sort of control over the government or the parliamentary party so that they do not deviate from their party mandate or manifesto;
What is urgently needed now is to play an effective role by some of our MPs or political leaders who are really sincere, educated and devoted to the institutionalization of parliamentary democracy; they should from their respective parties, whenever and whatever way possible, consistently create a sort of genuine pressure so that Khaleda-Hasina cannot take any arbitrary or dictatorial actions to destroy democracy.
Although a lot of measures need to be taken for ensuring good governance. I hope, if sincere efforts can be taken for implementing the above-mentioned steps then good governance will be ensured. On the other extreme, the opposition, civil society and social groups and organizations also have the moral obligations to help and cooperate with the governments in this juncture.
From socio-economic point of view Bangladesh is an underdeveloped country. There is a plethora of problems like over-population and its rapid growth, illiteracy, poverty, diseases, malnutrition, unemployment etc. but almost all these problems have been created by our leaders. On the other hand, there are huge possibilities and factors in favor of industrialization and economic growth in the country. Many third world countries started their journey towards good governance and economic with fragile institutions as was in the case of Bangladesh. But these like Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia have been able to make success in a comparatively shorter period. But Bangladesh still lags behind. Despite the existence of all ample possibilities for both political and economic development we are still struggling because we couldn't get an honest and far-sighted leader who can guide the nation with devoted spirit into a proper direction. The Malaysian ex-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad is a classic example of a prudent and intelligent leader; he transformed Malaysia from rudimentary stage of this 'tiger' status ensuring good governance. Again, South Korea's economy was no better than ours in the 60s. Its per capita income was lower than that of Bangladesh in 1953. But by virtue of solid leadership skill, it has surpassed us long ago. South Korea achieved tremendous development in General Chun du Huan's and Rae Tu's regime during 1980-93. Even then, Mr. Chun was not forgiven for his overwhelming corruption. He was sentenced to death. This is a good lesson for Bangladesh where public leaders work for their own gain and scot-free even after corruption.
— NewsNetwork