Good politics safeguards the national interest

The world has witnessed great changes, for good or bad, within the last decades, but our people are as disillusioned as before and are probably reluctantly thinking of embarking on another fight for still unachieved rights, independence and freedom from undesirable rule vis-a-vis management of affairs of the state on behalf of the people for people's welfare.

The gaps between the ideals of the ruling parties, the governments, the state machinery and the people's aspirations are widening fast, creating a situation of mistrust, abuse of power, dereliction of duties, uneasy frustration in the society, high-handedness in suppressing unrest, economic dependence, unwelcome external meddling, compromise with national interest, disregard for people's life and welfare, broken chain of command in the administration, redundant or dysfunctional institutions, and the rule of bad and hazy laws.

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Who can narrow these gaps? How can these gaps be narrowed for national prosperity, social discipline, and people's welfare? There is no magic answer to all these questions, but there is a system of finding the answers and solving the problems confronted by us. Here I try to touch on some of the issues involved with indication of solution for public rethinking.

The rules of the game
Politics is supposed to be practiced according to the rules of the national constitution accepted by all. In a democratic system, political parties usually play the role of opinion-leaders. They enjoy the respect of the people as they think and act for the welfare of the people. History tells us that any party staying long in power starts thinking of their men as above the law and the society. The party men start to be self-seeking, abuse power, and push the country to economic and social indiscipline, as is the case in recent times, and the so-called terrorism, rent-seeking, extortion and security crisis are simply some visible forms of direct or indirect reactions to them. These cannot be remedied arbitrarily. They may well be eradicated or inhibited through innovative institutions and effective and scientific form of local self-government, possibly, non-party local self-government.

Party regulations and code of conduct
Our constitution does not have any clear provision for regulating political activities and parties. Constitutions of many countries stipulate that the political parties shall participate in forming of political will of the people. Their internal organization shall conform to democratic principles. They shall publicly account for the sources and use of their funds and for their assets. They must be registered bodies, etc.

There are provisions regarding qualification of the candidates, allowable period of campaign, election expenses, and other effective election rules. There are restrictions on fund raising, code of conduct and regulations on other important matters. To minimize abuse of fundraising provisions, for instance, Japan allows payment of public money to political parties in proportion to the number of seats won. Parliament membership is supposed to be a demanding full-time job. There is no scope of musclemen and open abuse of ill-gotten money for vote-buying. When the populations are better educated it becomes difficult to buy their conscience and election is liable to be fair and beyond question. The politics will gradually be the politics of issues of national and people's interest and that of competition to serve the people better. The national constitution may provide for clear rules and effective institutions.

National economy
In Bangladesh, most of the governments have seemingly been in competition to borrow externally under any conditionality to run the administration lavishly without any regard to capacity building. The result is today's miserably imprudent devaluation of the Bangladesh Taka to about Tk.63.8 to a dollar (as of Feb. 10, 2005) which is itself weakened in the world market.

The rate was Tk.7.3 to a dollar in 1971-72, Tk.8.875 in 1974-75, Tk.20.065 in 1981-82, Tk.35.675 in 1990-91, Tk.40.836 in 1995-96, and Tk.53.952 in 2000-01. Can we call it a responsible management of economy? Who will take the responsibility? If we compare the strengthening of Japanese currency from the rate of 360 Yen to a dollar in 1971 to about 105 to a dollar now, we can well understand our miserable situation despite rhetoric to the contrary.

China is resisting pressure to revalue her currency upward with her trade surplus of $161 billion with the US alone in 2004. Some people tend to take credit for a foreign reserves of $3 billion plus. What does it really mean for a borrower keeping a part of his borrowed money in his pocket to show his solvency? The textbook logic that high value of currency makes our exports costlier, simply does not apply to Bangladesh which must import to cover shortfall in essentials and can export a few primary products of limited supply and low-value-addition like readymade garments mostly based on imported raw material, spending up to 70 to 80 percent of export value.

Before it is too late, we should save every dollar we can earn and make them available to and for industries of potentiality. We must aim at a currency rate of around Tk. 40 to a dollar in some years. For promotion of industrialization and industrial rehabilitation, higher value of Taka is very much welcomed. Over the last few decades our economy was not handled properly. Its handling is too miserable and weak now. A small amount of export and expatriate remittance is temporarily saving the government from a foreign exchange crisis. Why should we, with a population of 140 million, be complacent with per capita GDP of about $420? Why could we not raise it to $3000 to $5000 within last 34 years? Should we still say, our policies were right? We must think beyond. Laissez faire economics cannot take us to prosperity. Political initiative is a must.

Industrialization and employment
Full employment cannot be dreamt of except through selective industrialization, not through competing low-tech foreign investment. We need to do the hard job ourselves to solve our problems and open up our future. Internal economic strength shall also help us build up honorable friendly relationship with other countries as an equal.

President Ziaur Rahman could be convinced to seriously take up technology-based industrialization for national development. He took the idea and gave a life to industrialization process and inspired the entrepreneurs to get into industrial ventures. With him the light of industrialization got dimmed, if not extinguished. It is very unfortunate that we are closing our industries one after another with illusionary, if not deceptive, promise of replacing them by future EPZ ventures, etc. We are opening our service sector to uneven competition before our secondary (manufacturing) industrial sector.

If the government is serious, it can immediately nullify the wrong decision on closure of industries, set aside interest-free or low-interest fund of $1 to $2 billion, to start with, for setting up new industries and rehabilitating the closed ones. There may hardly be any sensible citizen or political party that will not support the idea and relevant prompt action with sincerity.

Relations with donors
The World Bank, IMF, and ADB, the advice of which never helped any country, mostly happen to incapacitate the industrial, technological, and developmental potentiality in the developing countries like ours as quickly as possible, and lock them into a cycle of borrowing, lavishing away, and borrowing much more again to repay the dues to finally push them deep into perpetual dependency and vulnerability.

In the absence of clear laws and constitutional provisions regulating external borrowing and its conditionality, restrictions against entering into any secret agreement, government and its officials easily yield to external pressure or allurement to put the national interest in jeopardy. We are borrowing money for consultants to give us superficial, negative or worthless advice, to destroy our nationalized banks and important institutions and to finally influence our banking and financial system itself.

We are under pressure and allurement to stealthily sign losing agreements and laws to give immunity to World Bank and IMF. There is no use blaming them. The employees of those international institutions are not to care for our interest, they are supposed to carry out the mission and order given to them. The responsibility is ours to identify our national interest and safeguard them with full responsibility and calculated hardship. This may however need political decision, possibly on national consensus

Bilateral and multilateral agreements
We are under pressure to sign TIFA (Trade and Investment Framework Agreement), showing a carrot of FTA (Free Trade Agreement) with the US. We have to evaluate our position. We can send some manpower. We are not capable enough to export any substantial manufactured goods. We are far from strengthening our own service sector to withstand external competition now. We virtually have no intellectual property to sell. While we find it hard to comply with WTO provisions, there is no point hurrying for any secret or bilateral agreement at this point of our economy. We shall have to study a lot. We must frame laws and amend constitution to prevent our governments to sign secret agreement against the long-term interest of the state.

Conclusion
Continuity in policies is one of the great casualty of the democratic system, specially when it is still in fluid state. Except for the advisory councils of Ayub Khan and Ziaur Rahman, there was hardly any occasion for socially, academically, and professionally prominent people to contribute to political decisions.

Ziaur Rahman's popularity can be greatly attributed to the goodwill and greatness of the members of his initial advisory council in addition to his committed leadership. Present two-thirds majority can really sow the seeds of continuity by amending or rewriting the constitution with consistent intellectual input from all parties and thinkers for long-term development of the country, preserving our social values.

Incidentally the author has worked on such a constitutional proposal which has been submitted to ruling and opposition politicians and intellectuals for study. The development is the product of concerted play of numerous policy instruments like economic system, fiscal and monetary policy, legal system, educational policy, technological capability building, research priority, infrastructure building capacity, taxation system, effective administrative system, and institutions, and the like.

It is desired that the ruling party shall earnestly take initiative to sort out effective policy instruments in right perspective for national development and people's welfare, that will continue to function under changed circumstances.

Mustafizur Rahman, Ph.D. is Chairman, Institute of Development Strategy, Dhaka. The views expressed here are the author's own, and not necessarily of the organization he represents.