State of governance in Bangladesh

Roberto Rotberg (in The Washington Quarterly) emphasises the absolute necessity to understand the nation-state failure as they become hospitable to and harbour non-state actors such as warlords and terrorists. Failed states are tense, writes Rotberg, deeply conflicted, and bitterly contested by opposing factions. Insurgencies, varieties of civil and communal unrest, and a plethora of dissent of violent nature directed at the state machineries fill the landscape of a failed state. Added to this cascade of violence, the massive deterioration of the living standard of the people, decay in the infrastructure of their daily life, and the greed and kleptomania of the rulers overwhelming the conscience of the ruled and foreign actors (principally the donors/international agencies) lead the failed state towards an abyss like a train without a driver.

Rotberg reminds us that failed states not only reflect disharmony among communities, but their patrimonial rule depends on patronage based system of extraction from ordinary citizens. Failed states therefore are unable to provide security, among other political goods, to their people, the most central and foremost among the political goods which are the raison d'etre of the existence of a nation. If legislatures exist, these are no more than rubber-stamp machines. Democratic debates are muffled at best or asphyxiated at worst. The bureaucracy has long lost its professionalism and exists to carry out the orders of its political masters who take extreme punitive measures against those perceived to be even slightly disloyal. The "loyalists" are awarded with prized postings and promotions regardless of complaints of corruption and repression of the people against them. In this award game, the people, in whose name elections are held and sovereignty is exercised, are an irrelevant actor. In failed states, political goods in the form of health, education, infrastructure, and political institutions are abandoned to forces of decrepitude. Unparalleled economic opportunities offered by these states are reserved for the privileged few who are either children or cronies of the political leaders. Such "cronyism" which was widely practiced in Suharto's Indonesia has become a by-word in the history of corruption. Kleptocracy reached an art form in Mobutu's Zaire, and most recently, in Robert Taylor's Liberia.

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Corruption thrives in failed states, and contributes to the degenerative process of state failure. But the people already enslaved by a state machinery are not participants in this degenerative process, and are actually prisoners of war in a fight between the good and the evil, in which the evil, albeit for the time being, has triumphed. If one analyses the causes of state failure in recent times, the inescapable conclusion one reaches is that state failure is man made because leadership decisions and leadership failures have destroyed states and continues to weaken the fragile foundation of society.

Bangladesh has been dubbed as the most corrupt country in the world by Transparency International. The International Council of Journalists has described Bangladesh as the most unsafe Asian country for journalists. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch continue to criticise human rights violations by state agents in Bangladesh. Recently the US State Department bracketed Bangladesh along with Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, Sierra Leone, and Venezuela for failing to take adequate actions to prevent human trafficking. In the mid-1990s, the Commission on Global Governance felt that "to confine the concept of security exclusively to the protection of states is to ignore the interest of the people who form the citizens of the state and in whose name sovereignty is exercised. It can produce situations in which regimes in power feel that they have unfettered freedom to abuse the right to security of their people. All people, no less than all states, have an obligation to protect those rights." British philosopher John Locke forcefully argued that since sovereignty did not reside in states but in the people, the states were bound by what he called "natural" laws having a stature superior to any positive laws emanating from any political system or constitution for the protection of the people. The Lockean argument continues with the premise that whenever legislatures endeavour to take away and reduce people to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people. Therefore, argues Locke, whenever legislatures transgress this fundamental rule of society and, either by folly, ambition, or corruption, endeavour to grasp for themselves absolute power over the lives and liberties of the people, such legislatures thereby give to the people the right to establish new legislature for their own safety and security.

Quintessentially the Lockean argument to establish a new legislature by the people is caused by what Alexis Tocqueville termed as tyranny of the majority. In such situations majorities in any legislature often impose their will on that numerical minority with opposing philosophies which results in minority view points not being effectively represented. In order that the "minority" view is not excessively excluded, resulting in eventual explosion of discontent, US President James Madison advised that in framing a government which was to be administered by men over men, it was necessary not only to enable the government to control the governed, but also for the government to control itself. Tocqueville was never convinced that numerical majority based on the notion that there was more intelligence and wisdom in the number of men united than in a single individual, and that the number of legislators was more important than their quality. It is believed that Alexander Hamilton tried to find a solution of preventing tyranny by the majority through accommodation of interests and opinions of all the constituent parties of a nation.

Today's world is more complex than those of bygone days. It is not enough for the government to restrain its urge to legislate what it perceives to be in its selfish interest. In the words of James Madison, "stimulated by some irregular passions or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentation of interested men," the legislatures, to be credible, have to act in such a way that Thoreauites (followers of Henry David Thoreau) do not find it difficult to resign their conscience to legislators because the people "should be men first and subject afterwards."

The recently enacted 14th amendment to the Constitution of Bangladesh has given rise to some misgivings in some quarters. For example, the provision on women's representation in parliament has been opposed by the target quarter itself, namely the women, who overwhelmingly want direct elections to the women's seats. Similarly, the provision relating to the retirement age of the judges of the Supreme Court has been alleged to have been done with ulterior political motive by the ruling party. Added to these criticisms leveled at the government are the alarming downslide in the law and order situation in which neither life nor property appear to be safe, incessant complaints of extortion, which only serves to raise the prices of commodities as the burden of extortion is passed on to the consumers by the traders, and the existing patronage-based system of extraction from ordinary citizens who are forced to pay for services which they are entitled to get free of extortion/corruption charges. The World Bank has estimated that revenue loss to the government exceeds $500 million due to corruption and inefficiency, $1 billion due to poor port management, and $100 million due to power sector loss. Swedish economist Gunar Myrdal in his book The Asian Drama showed how the prevalence of corruption, which works in the interest of the rich and the powerful, retards economic growth of a country.

While the litany of woes afflicting Bangladesh is endless, we should try to find out solutions so that the entire population of this country is not stigmatised for the failure of the few. To say that institutional reforms are necessary is to state the obvious. The proposal to have a tax ombudsman should be welcomed in principle. One would have wished to have an ombudsman with wider powers. Proposed amendment to the Bank Company Act on defaulted loan definition and curbing bank trade unionism appear to be welcome moves. Article 70 in our Constitution in its present form restricting the legislators from voting according to their conscience should be suitably amended. Separation of the judiciary from the executive should be done without further delay. The independent anti-corruption body should be allowed to function as soon as possible. Law enforcement agencies, criticised both at home and abroad, should be encouraged to serve the people instead of only the interests of the ruling party. Realistic budget should be presented, not to score political points, but to accelerate economic growth along with distributive justice. The image of Bangladesh as a tolerant Muslim country, tarnished by atrocities let loose upon the minority community with perpetrators still to be called to account, the Banskhali incident, unresolved arms smuggling cases, non-arrest of Bangla Bhai despite order from the top for his arrest, unearthing of militant training camps in the dense forests of Chittagong, etc have to be corrected.

The world community needs to be assured that Bangladesh is not one of those countries facing serious, in the words of William Olson, "internal problems that threaten continued coherence" or "significant internal challenges to their political orders." Just as maladies are endless, so are prescriptions for remedy. What, however, is essential if we are to get ourselves out of the quagmire of political and economic underdevelopment, is the need for sagacious political leadership conversant with, and complemented by, knowledge of national and international currents and undercurrents, committed to the ideals of service to the people, and imbibed with a spirit of accommodation of differing views. Only then, perhaps, Bangladesh may have the possibility of arresting her rapid slide into the depths of an abyss.

Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador.