Our challenged democracy

Winter is at our doorsteps and it threatens to be one of discontent. Once again democracy in Bangladesh is confronted with a grave challenge. Twenty three years after the restoration of parliamentary democracy, the country is in the grip of a deepening crisis. Crisis such as this, is not new. Fledgling democracy in the restless social and economic atmosphere has been riddled by one crisis after another since the advent of Bangladesh in blood and fire.
The 1971 historic war of liberation was, in essence, a struggle for democracy. It was the lack of democracy in the dictatorial state of Pakistan that principally lead to the sanguinary struggle for emancipation of the Bengalis of Bangladesh. Despite this the newly-founded democratic order in post-liberation Bangladesh collapsed in the war-ravaged country. The history of successive military rule and their re-civilianisation is well documented. It is not necessary or relevant now to recapitulate this part of our past. Resurrected parliamentary democracy has been with us since 1991. It is important that we focus on our relatively recent past. This may help identify the roots of the troubles that haunts our democracy.
From the very beginning of the season of its renewal parliamentary democracy largely remained unable to regain the culture and reaffirm the practices of democracy. The failure was principally caused by the inadequacy of the political classes that emerged since the beginning of 1990s. A closer look would, however, reveal that it was not only the leading political elements but also the elite that contributed to the continuing crises of democracy.
The politicians and the elite which serve as their catchment area and support base did not emerge all of a sudden. They were both produced by our eclectic political history. That history traced its way to multi-party and single-party order and military rule with their re-civilianisation and resurrection of parliamentary democracy. Every change of regime threw up a new set of elites who had no time to learn their social responsibilities. The political classes which were born in the wombs of these elites, therefore, could not get the opportunity and time for adequate social mobilisation.
As a result of somewhat abrupt process, political leaders and activist, barring honourable exceptions, could not learn and absorb the culture of democracy: tolerance of differing and dissenting opinions, respect for the rule of law and human rights and freedom of association, assembly and media. These are the basic building blocks of a democratic culture. Without these, democracy as a pervasive cultural principle cannot take roots or flourish. The procedures and practices of democracy are founded on and emanate from such a culture. It adheres to the time-old principle of unity in diversity. The differences that make a multiparty democracy lively also contribute to an abiding sense of national unity. This helps the democratic state to be unified and viable.
Unfortunately, the members of existing political classes, with honourable exceptions, pay only lip service to the fundamental principles of democracy. Many of them shout themselves hoarse in favour of toleration and human rights for the sake of winning elections. Once victory is achieved the winners blissfully forget the immediate past. They rapidly get going with the mission of securing their return to power in the next elections. For this purpose they first use state power and resources to set up and elaborate patron-client nexus with their supporters in politics, administration and business. In the second place, with government power and wealth they go about systematically and thoroughly with their covert purpose of dwarfing the constitutional opposition, the political party who lost the election.
The deduction of state institutions by setting up nation-wide patron-client network tends to rob democracy of its essence. Simultaneously, the process of diminishing the opposition adversely affects the development of democracy.
Both these negative processes were in operation through more than two decades of revived parliamentary democracy in Bangladesh. Though not very visible, limited attempts at politicising part of the civil administration could be discerned during the closing years of the BNP government that ruled the country from 1991-1996. The then largest opposition party, the Awami League, did not get due treatment as constitutionally permitted political opposition. The rights and privileges that the Leader of Opposition is entitled to in a democracy were given to her more in appearance than in substance. One remembers the opposition leader Sheikh Hasina being followed by a protection vehicle which was all but dilapidated and rickety. The policemen riding the vehicle were evidently embarrassed as it coughed to halt intermittently.
The story did not end there. The Awami League when it rose to power after successfully steering the movement for a caretaker government to oversee national elections, paid the new opposition BNP in its own coins. There were visible signs of the emergence of a partisan bureaucracy. The seeds were planted during the open movement of a part of the civil service organised under the controversial (Janatar Mancha) which supported the cause of the Awami League even before it was elected to power. On the other hand, the new rulers spared no pains to contain the opposition within narrow confined. They continued with the same exercise of cowing down the opposition with the help of police and other elements of law and order and security machinery.
The processes of subversion of democracy by the avowed guardians of democracy continued as the BNP regained power in the 2001 elections. The same tends and tendencies of making the government partisan intensified. During the closing years of its tenure the ruling party attempted to secure its return in the subsequent elections by various questionable means. The opposition reacted with immense rage and the consequent confrontation in the streets led to the emergence of an unusual interim government in the garb of a reconstituted caretaker government backed by the Armed Forces. It lasted for about two years from January 11, 2007. As everybody knows that government held an election which resulted in the overwhelming victory of the Awami League-led Grand Alliance, the Mohajot.
Great hopes were raised. The nation justifiably expected that the politicians of both the major parties, who suffered so much during the military-backed interim government, would have a change of hearts. It was hoped that their reformed mindsets would put a halt to the negative processes of 'Partisan government' instead of democratically correct party government.
The new crisis besetting the country just before the national elections due by January 24, 2014 is a veritable continuation of the severe crises that have been hounding us since the 1990s.
The settled questions of substance and procedures of politics have been unsettled time and again. It has always had disastrous consequences. This time, it is the unsettling of the caretaker government system which is causing so much trouble. At the moment of writing this article the confrontation continued with some hopes of dialogue between the ruling party and the opposition for a peaceful regulation of the dispute. One does not know how the whole unfortunate situation will end. One can only hope for the best and yet prepare for the worst. The present crisis may be managed for the time being but as before it may bear the imprint of 'in-built mismanagement'. That is quite likely as we have not yet grasped the fundamentals of democracy. Consensus on major national issue including nationalism and the status of national leaders of differing camps, toleration for different and dissenting views and opinions and its corollary, respect for the constitutional opposition.
Dr. Mizanur Rahman Shelley, founder Chairman of Centre for Development Research, Bangladesh (CDRB) and Editor quarterly "ASIAN AFFAIRS", was a former teacher of political
science at Dhaka University and
former member of the erstwhile Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP) and former non-partisan technocrat Cabinet Minister of Bangladesh.
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