Strategically Speaking
Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink!
Brig Gen Shahedul Anam Khan ndc, psc (Retd)
It may be a loose analogy, but most of us feel like the ancient mariner, plethora of water around him but which he cannot quench his thirst with. I guess one could say the same of the reform agenda of which so much has been talked about but so very little has been done to date. There is talk of it everywhere but reform continuous to remain elusive, if not illusive.
The country has been seized with the issue since January 12, and the one thing that had generated public support for the current caretaker government was its stated objective of political reforms, since that was a matter that the people of Bangladesh, cutting across party lines, save a few, held a common view on.
The commonly held view is that politics will serve us very little, if at all, if it is continued to be used the way it has been so far. We can ill afford to forget the very compulsions of bringing in reforms, political and of political parties. I do not think that the basic assumptions have changed, and we can hardly allow the momentum to dissipate.
However, there are many who have constantly held the view that there is very little wrong with politics per se. It is the people who do politics that need to reform if democracy in the true sense were to find roots in Bangladesh. It is the person, so the wise say, and not the system, that is problematic.
Therefore, one could question the rationale of an exercise that would basically change the system, since changing our psyche is not possible, certainly not before the end of December 2008. There being little wrong with politics, what benefit would we get by whatever reforms of the system we chose to implement?
The question is, what is it that we are trying to reform? If you asked a person on the street what he or she would like to see in the system, the answer one was more likely to get was that the system should be so devised that it would keep the bad eggs out of it, and allow only the good ones to participate in politics. It is for the caretaker government, the state institutions and the civil society, including the political parties, to come together to work out the nitty-gritty.
I believe that more than anybody else, the political parties are the ones that should feel the need to bring in reforms within themselves. The need for this has once again been illustrated by the way the BNP chairperson, in her usual imperious manner, sacked the party general secretary and appointed a new one in his place just before her arrest on charges of corruption.
The demerits of a political party run on the whims of one person, or at best on the diktat of an oligarchy, have been amply illustrated by the way the country was run the last five years. Not just words but deeds are what we want to see in this regard. We are a little bit disappointed that not much progress has been made towards that end.
The redeeming feature in the midst of all the less than fruitful activities regarding reform agenda that witnessed peaks and troughs in intensity, is the recently held workshop on democracy, governance and security sector reforms. This was an effort to involve a cross section of the society for its input.
The positive feature of the whole episode of conceptualising and eventually concretising necessary political reform is that the government is also aware of the need to bring in reforms in the security sector. I say positive because so far, in spite of the developments in the field of civil-military relations (the recent events at DU and its fallout is an aberration, and I think we should be able to salvage the situation if we played our respective parts right), we had treated the security sector as a holy cow. It has often been protected with an umbra of secrecy, to the detriment of all.
It was heartening to see security matters brought to the realms of public discourse. In fact, it was much more than mere discourse. The exercise, in the form of a workshop attended by representatives of various callings, came out with very substantive suggestions regarding reform in the security sector that would ensure an efficient security system and consequently the state and the nation would get the value for the money spent on it.
It was very appropriate that the workshop considered democracy and good governance also, since these two vital issues will dictate the shape, size and function of the security system. In fact, to make the sector efficient and cost effective it must also be well governed.
The concept of security sector reforms is relatively new, and one must ascertain why we need reform in the first place. There are several compulsions that urge changes. It may be to bring in dynamism in the system or it may be to keep up with the changing times, but there are factors that have driven countries, particularly the developing ones, to effect reforms at the dictates of the donor agencies or the development partners, who make aids conditional upon the extent of the reforms.
Several issues that were highlighted in the workshop are worth sharing. First and foremost is that the term is more encompassing than we had been given to understand. It covers much more than the defense forces or those that are authorized under law to use force for the security of the sate, i.e. the law enforcing agencies and the paramilitary forces.
The other two components are the institutions that exercise oversight on this sector like the ministries, the parliament and the civil society, as well as the structures responsible to maintain the rule of law i.e. the judiciary and the human rights bodies. It is just as well that all these elements were represented at the workshop.
As for the suggestions, there were very fundamental issues that were addressed, including those that have definite influence on how the sector is governed and utilised. Since space precludes a detail discussion at this time I would like to end by bringing out what, to my mind, was the most important suggestion to emerge out of the workshop.
And which is that security forces, including the intelligence agencies, must be freed of the political influence without in any way diluting the political control. (We shall deal with it in greater detail later.) There was consensus that our security sector would have performed better but for the unwarranted political influence exerted on it by the democratic governments.
Whatever reform one contemplates, the crux of the matter is that the need to reform must come from within. The benefits of the changes must be appreciated by all; otherwise there will be resistance to the changes since there are multiple stakeholders with parochial outlook who might feel that their interest will be hampered as a consequence of reforms.
The author is Editor, Defense & Strategic Affairs, The Daily Star.
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