Going Deeper
Bangladesh's road to democracy
Currently, Bangladesh is being pressurised by both internal and external forces to hold a parliamentary election soonest possible. It is their combined judgment that unless a government is formed according to the will of the people, the actions that would continue to be taken for an extended period by the present interim government would lack legitimacy.
Perhaps the real fear of the stake-holders is that the government would hesitate to take responsibility should it fail to control the rising prices of essentials, particularly after the considerable damage to crops and vegetables caused by the flood.
Bangladesh needs developmental democracy that would embrace not only the foundational values of democracy, but, at the same time, ensure economic development of the country.
Doubts, however, exist in the minds of some as to whether Bangladeshis are equipped well enough to call the elected government to account, should it appear to stray from the path of good governance.
Political sociologist S.M. Lipset (Political Man, 1960) suggests that democratic political development is dependent upon a combination of economic, social, and cultural requisites that are unlikely to exist in countries with underdeveloped economies.
It is also argued that democracy is culturally rooted and the people of the country must have the desire to have democracy, which can only be promoted from outside but not imposed.
Given the authoritarian history of the broader Middle East and some parts of Africa, sceptics would like to cite historian Bernard Lewis's observation that democracy is peculiarly a Western concept, devised to conduct public affairs, that may or may not be suitable for others.
Though Lewis arrogantly presumed that democracy could be comprehended by the Westerners only, he perhaps forgot that Europe for centuries had no democratic institutions, and that the worst forms of authoritarianism, nazism and fascism, had sprung from Europe, albeit they were defeated by the Westerners themselves.
His assumption that the root cause of Muslim anger comes from having been defeated by "an inferior religion" -- Christianity -- is misplaced. But Bernard Lewis says that Christianity's scriptural directive to "render … unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's" as distinct from Islam's, for example, could be seen as one of the reasons of democracy deficit in Muslim countries.
Because Muslims believe that sovereignty resides in God and not in the people, a fundamental principle of democracy is denied by refusing to differentiate between temporal and spiritual powers.
But then, one has to admit that Christianity was born in adversity and was persecuted for centuries by the then rulers of the world, while Prophet Mohammed saw in his lifetime the victory of Islam in Arabia within a short time. In other words, unlike Christianity, Islam did not have a prolonged history of persecution.
Coincidentally, Islam prospered in tribal societies where democratic accountability in the form of accountability of the rulers to the ruled is rare, and if at all one did find accountability it would be constitutional accountability in the form of accounting for actions by office holders to one another; or an oligopolistic system in practice.
This could bring one to Samuel Huntington's hypothesis: "That the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great division among the human kind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations."
Given Huntington's definition of civilization as "the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes human from other species," some have interpreted one strand of terrorism in religio-civilisational terms, particularly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, as acts having been perpetrated by Islamic extremists that have produced fear and consequent bias against Muslims in the Western world.
Admittedly, the US pressure on Hosni Mubarak had resulted in a multiple race for the presidency for the first time in Egypt, but a significant part of the US establishment has turned anti-Saudi Arabia, a staunch US ally in the Middle East, due to its adherence to Wahabism, a purist strand of Islam, and the Saudi refusal to allow any other religion to be practiced on its soil. Added was the factor that the majority of 9/11 terrorists were holding Saudi passports.
Despite President Musharraf's full cooperation with the US in the war on terror, there is increasing belief in the West that: "Al-Qaeda is reorganising in Pakistan. Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawaheri and other leaders are hiding in Pakistan. British and other extremists obtain terrorist training in Pakistan, and the US have caught a majority of high value detainees in Pakistan." (Philip Gordon, Brookings Institution).
This kind of thesis, factual but without rigorous investigation, has landed the Muslim diaspora in the West in the position of negotiating a perilous existence in the land of their birth.
The West has to admit that the Iraq invasion has been a disaster, and has broken the security blanket so long enjoyed by not only the West but also by the entire international community. Consequently, the Islamic extremists have targeted the West for its perceived moral degeneration and hypocritical foreign policy (e.g. Israel), and the Islamic countries for their "laxity" in following the Islamic edicts.
Besides, the doctrine of pre-emption, despite Western attempts to justify it as necessary for facing the threats emerging in the 21st century, remains controversial because the international community remains committed to the United Nations as the ultimate destination for solution of inter-state conflicts.
Developing countries, having gone through the agony of colonisation, are zealous in guarding their sovereignty. US advocacy of liberal democratic values has not been able to convince the countries in its backyard.
Chavez of Venezuela, Ortega of Nicaragua, Lula of Brazil, Michelle Bachelet of Chile, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Lopez Obrador of Mexico are current examples of the Left sweeping over Latin America.
They are neither Marxists nor Soviet camp followers. They are the products of low growth rates, dismal poverty, extreme inequality, high unemployment, and military dictatorship.
They are modern, open minded, reformists and internationalists, but in favour of social improvement over macroeconomic orthodoxy, egalitarian distribution of income over wealth creation, of national ownership of natural resources in place of foreign ownership. In short, they are left of centre.
It would, therefore, appear that the road towards democracy does not necessarily have to follow the US or the Westminster model, but can be home-grown, so long as democracy, meaning the consensus of the great majority of the people on the goals to be achieved and the benefits to be reached to all sections of the people, in Bangladesh is freely and transparently determined.
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