Going Deeper
Treading the trodden path
ONE may wonder if there are variants of democracy in developing and developed parts of the world. Barak Obama, winning the caucus at Iowa and placing second in the New Hampshire primary, may create history if he is elected as the first African-American president of the US, while his father's birthplace -- Kenya -- is smouldering after the presidential election, the results of which the opposition refuses to accept. In Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili has got the endorsement from OSCE, though many in his country consider the election as flawed.
One can argue that the Americans have been practicing democracy for hundreds of years while Kenya and Georgia are recent entrants in the field of democracy and, hence, are yet to attain the patience and discipline displayed by Al Gore in the 2000 US presidential elections when the US Supreme Court declared George Bush as the winner.
One can equally argue that in Kenya the votes were given along tribal lines, and in Georgia a sizeable part's loyalty to the Russian Federation plays an important role in the elections.
In Georgia, a constituent part of the former USSR, political liberty is important to the people, while in Kenya, like in Bangladesh, economic advancement remains a mirage even after decades of being independent. Can one then assume that time should be allowed for democracy to grow roots? Or should one insist that the preconditions set by Francis Fukuyama -- the level of economic condition existing in a country, neighbourhood effect, desire of the people to have democracy, and cultural heritage conducive to the sustainability of democracy -- have to be there for successful democratic practice?
Empirical studies have, however, proved that once a country reaches the stage where it is called a developed country it has never gone back to authoritarianism. Examples abound of countries, like Spain, Portugal and Greece, that did not allow authoritarianism to return once they achieved developed country status and joined the European Union.
If we add Japan and Singapore to the list of practicing democracies then we can ignore Bernard Lewis's snide remark that democracy is peculiarly a Western way of conducting public affairs, that may or may not be suitable for others. But proving Lewis wrong does not detract from the fact that high level of economic development is an essential prerequisite for sustainable democracy.
India somehow has proved to be an exception. Perhaps because of India being a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural country. The founding leaders were wise to make India a federation, devolving powers to states to write their own destiny within the federation of India and giving enough political space to different shades of ideology so that they could cohabit with one another.
Had India tried to impose Punjabi like domination that Pakistan tried unsuccessfully, resulting in the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent nation and continuing irredentism in Baluchistan, NWFP and Sind, as was the case in the ethnic conflict between Serbs and Croats in Croatia, amongst Serbs, Croats and Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo, things could have been different.
The importance of neighbourhood effect was demonstrated by the insistence by the Western powers that the former constituent parts of USSR and Yugoslavia must follow the principles of self determination, respect for borders, support of democracy, safeguarding of human rights, respect for international law, respect for the provisions of the UN Charter, and guarantees for the ethnic and national groups and minorities etc to be eligible for recognition as independent states. Some of these requirements went far beyond the traditional requirements of statehood as provided in the Montevideo Convention, listing only four qualifications for statehood.
The very fact that many of these countries have been made members of Nato and the European Union will act as a guarantee that they must remain democratic at all times. It has been suggested that the primary reason behind the quick transformation of these erstwhile communist and authoritarian countries into the Western mould is that the communist period to them was an aberration, and the Western capitalist democracy was their original home. It must also be recognised that almost all of these countries had per capita income and GDP far more than developing and least developed countries of the East.
It is well and good that Bangladeshis will get the opportunity to choose their representatives this year, who, hopefully, will not lead the country to a repeat of the 2001-2006 alliance government's kleptocratic rule. But since we do not have the Californian system of recalling non-performing members of parliament nor the legal immunity from prosecution were we to follow Henry David Thoreau's refusal to give up all his rights to the elected representatives, the fear of being betrayed once again by our political leaders remains.
The optimists among us would term this kind of fear as masochism or self-flagellation as the reformed institutions that are expected to support democracy would not allow such a thing to come to pass. But then, the fundamental question remains that whether the change of guards at the top level of institutions can necessarily be termed as institutional reforms?
It is disheartening to note that in the present, highly competitive world our Public Service Commission, for example, has decided to keep quotas in different categories where meritocracy should have prevailed. An efficient bureaucracy is an essential component of a successful democracy, and the sacrifice of meritocracy at the altar of political expediency cannot bear fruit. But then, good education in Bangladesh has become so expensive that parents of the students from poor, lower and middle class simply cannot afford to send their children to good schools and tutorial homes.
Besides, the children of well-off families have the opportunity to go abroad for higher education and, at some point of time, if they choose to come home they can join multinational companies with financial benefits, which their home educated colleagues can only dream about. This asymmetrical treatment can be explained by the principle that the great majority of the people in a society must live in disadvantaged position for the other people to live in splendour, and by the assumption that those coming back are more economically productive in an increasingly globalised market place.
The fact that some of the under-performing members of the caretaker government had to leave the government is a good sign to the next elected government. Not only ministers but also bureaucrats should be judged on the basis of performance. We must always remind ourselves of the conception of radical democrats as opposed to participatory democrats, and that the domain of politics is not confined to formal political institutions like parliament but also includes informal public spaces in civil society.
As political self-government is a constituent element of personal freedom it is necessary for the people to be a part and parcel of the political community where they and they alone will determine the priorities that will govern their future. Should there be any significant departure from the collective will of the people a mechanism should exist so that the people do not have to wait for another five years to change their lot.
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