Going Deeper
Equality in the right to vote
Elections to parliament and local bodies are generally regarded as the first step towards a democratic set up. In ancient Greece all free men, and in Rome even commoners called plebs had voting rights. Till recently, women did not have the right of franchise. Even today, to be a voter one has to have certain qualifications like age, education (in certain countries), etc.
In short all citizens, under certain conditions, have equal right to vote and get elected. The question that can be raised is whether the number of votes a candidate gets should qualify him to represent majority of the voters who did not vote for him (assuming he got only 30% of the votes which constituted greater number of votes cast compared to other candidates) on questions affecting all the people living in the constituency.
One could also ask if the majority number of votes would necessarily represent the best judgment of and for the people, since all voters do not possess similar level of education and intelligence but have equal weightage in voting. After the elections a number of small constituent parties can get together to form a majority and bring to reality Edmund Burke's apprehension of the cruelty that can be inflicted on the minority by the majority in a democracy.
In Bangladesh, we had experienced during the BNP-Jamaat rule for five years unaccountable repression on the minority parties in and out of the parliament because the alliance government had a massive majority in the Jatyo Sangshad that, coupled with Article 70 of the Constitution, rendered the democratically elected government into a dictatorship of then prime minister and the infamous Hawa Bhavan.
Even if one were to accept the massive victory of BNP in the last election as a result of the voters' disenchantment with the Awami League rule, the fact remains that people themselves through adult suffrage had unwittingly installed dictatorship of the majority parties in parliament as under the present system the voters totally relinquish their power to the elected government till the next elections.
Since in our system we do not have the luxury of refusing to give up complete mastery over our fate, like Henry David Thoreau advocated in his treatise on Civil Disobedience in which he quoted: "Paley, [English theologian William Paley 1743-1805] a common authority with many on moral questions, in his chapter on the 'Duty of Submission to Civil Government,' resolves all civil obligation into expediency; and he proceeds to say that "so long as the interest of the whole society requires it, that is, so long as the established government cannot be resisted or changed without public inconveniency, it is the will of God … that the established government be obeyed -- and no longer. This principle being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of the probability and expense of redressing it on the other."
Besides democratic precepts like rule of law, fundamental human rights, and rights of minorities etc, i.e. all the rights that we have as a nation entered into contract with the international community to respect, but have not yet made a part of our domestic law (albeit many had been put in our 1972 Constitution), appear to be abstract concepts to great majority of the people of Bangladesh.
Unfortunately, unlike developed countries (Margaret Thatcher's ouster and the "forced" resignation of Tony Blair, or the resignation of the US Senate majority leader and Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representative, for alleged malfeasance), leaders of the Third World countries are prone to continue their rule through dynastic politics by using money and muscle that can be easily converted into votes in poverty stricken country like ours.
Rule of law is more often a slogan than a reality for the poor who cannot buy justice, so they have to rely for protection on mostly anti-social elements who incidentally are also rich people of the area having accumulated wealth through questionable means. The debate is now rendered to the question of morality of seeking protection of the "rich and the powerful" (many of whom are now behind the bars due to the overturning of the apple cart designed by the alliance government for winning the sham election scheduled for January 22 thankfully by the events of 1/11), and the reality of the dehumanisation of the poor in all aspects of life under the present political system.
This situation flies in the face of Michael Walzer's contention that since the people "are subjects of law, and if law is to bind them as free men and women, they must also be its makers (Philosophy and Democracy)."
Despite the messiness and compromises that one has to deal with in real politics, eminent political scientists have advocated deliberative democracy where "political decisions are collectively binding" and the people have supposedly the opportunity to participate in the decision making. From Winston Churchill to John Rawls, democracy has been variously described as the best available system to a "fair system of cooperation."
The debate is not about the philosophical underpinnings of democracy as a concept but its practice in underdeveloped societies where normative democracy is not always the rule. In such cases one wonders about the truth of Francis Fukuyama's assertion that democracy has to be culturally rooted in a society that should have a reasonable level of development, having a sizeable number of land/house owning people to form a society of stakeholders for sustainable democracy, and that people should have an intrinsic desire for freedom and democracy.
This can perhaps explain historian Bernard Lewis' broadside at the Muslims that democracy is a peculiarly Western way of dealing with public affairs that may or may not be suitable for others. Undeniably, most of the members of the OIC cannot boast of practicing democracy largely because the societal foundations of these states are tribal, and authoritarian transition to democracy is difficult due to resistance by the present beneficiaries. In a few Islamic countries where democracy is practiced, the demographic structure of those countries is mostly multi-ethnic and multi-religious.
The inferences drawn, particularly during the colonial period, that the white man has to carry the burden of "civilising" the native population of the colonies, undermined by the 1911 Paris Universal Races Congress' demonstration of "monogenism" -- the idea that there is only one species of man living on earth today -- and the 1951 Unesco Statement of the Nature of Race and Racial Differences stressing the influence of environment being far more important in shaping behaviour than inherited genetics and denying the validity of hierarchical classification of human beings, putting cold water on Immanuel Kant's stress on non-rational and intuitive form of thought, though expressed in a different context, that can be attributed to any particular segment of population.
Just as economic development is desired by all, but can be achieved only through a process that takes time, democracy, likewise, cannot be achieved through Aladdin's magic lamp unless institutional frameworks that would sustain democracy are first made foundational.
Elections are good so far as the wish and frustration of the people are expressed (if they are allowed to vote in a free and fair manner while understanding the issues confronting the nation).
Countries like ours, burdened particularly with the experience of the last five years, would be better served by one or several institutions and civil societies monitoring the activities of the elected representatives.
Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador.
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