Ground Realities
Of non-elected government, of restored morality
Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed gives us all reason for relief, perhaps even a dash of happiness, when he suggests that a non-elected government ought not to be in office for long. We can surely comprehend the difficulties he finds himself in.
Of course, anyone who presides over a government is an individual who nearly always finds himself between a rock and a hard place. Power, as we keep hearing, is that aphrodisiac which eventually makes lonely beings of people. Fakhruddin Ahmed, occupying the heights that he now does, is certainly a lonely man. It is all part of politics, even though men like the chief adviser may not be politicians by vocation.
What makes matters even more complex for Fakhruddin Ahmed is the reality that he is now engaged in a mighty struggle, as he and his friends see it, to set politics going along a course where it will once more become the repository of respect it has historically been.
It is too bad for Fakhruddin Ahmed, and too bad for the rest of us, that we need to reassure ourselves every five years that government will be normal and life will be back on the rails through all the plumbing that a caretaker administration will be asked to do once an elected body of politicians makes its way out of office. There ought not to be any room for misunderstanding here.
The truth, a pretty unpalatable one, is that it is a sign of a nation's creeping anaemic political health when it becomes necessary for the constitution to guarantee the entry and prevalence of an interim, non-elected government for a period of time prior to the emergence, through elections, of a new administration comprising politicians.
Obviously, it is a system that cannot go on forever. And there are reasons why we express that kind of sentiment here. There is, at one level, the pretty abnormal, even bizarre, condition cropping up when an elected government makes way for one that is not elected. At another level, it is the economic aspects that come up with all the changes that must be made for the three months prior to general elections.
There are, then, the moral issues involved. Despite the fact that a non-elected caretaker administration has been given a constitutional basis to operate on, to what extent does such an arrangement fulfill the criteria that a proper, electorally approved government does?
Perhaps the chief adviser was reflecting on such issues of legitimate concern. Perhaps he was not. But what he certainly worries over, like the rest of us, is the longevity of the government he these days provides leadership to. The worries cannot be missed, for he has said, and keeps saying at every opportunity, that general elections will take place by December of next year.
A sense emerges that he feels he needs to reassure the country that things are on course. That is a particular dilemma that non-elected governments generally fall prey to. Popular faith in the pronouncements of governments is what is important. Credibility is all. The history of martial law regimes, in Bangladesh as also elsewhere, has not exactly been edifying.
Too many promises of a return to elected government have been jettisoned too many times. That, you might suggest, is what martial law regimes do, and keep doing, until they can create the conditions that will facilitate their continuation in power in some quasi-constitutional form.
It has happened this way in Bangladesh, first under General Ziaur Rahman and then under General H.M. Ershad. The good thing, though, is that Fakhruddin Ahmed does not lead that kind of a regime. Which is why he is on stronger ground than one who leads a government that lacks legitimacy. And that is the difference between this government and the military governments (as also the Moshtaque aberration) that came earlier in this country.
The simple truth is that Fakhruddin Ahmed has his worries. There are other truths as well, all of which converge on the idea that his government is, unlike any earlier caretaker government, well-positioned to retrieve the country from the deep pit it has been pushed into, especially over the past five years of elected, indiscriminately irresponsible governance.
Its work in such areas as a reconstitution of the Election Commission and the Public Service Commission ought to be considered a reflection of how institutions should be working. Its confidence in the Anti-Corruption Commission in turn raises the level of confidence across the country about some very real efforts being expended toward dealing with those who have long taken Bangladesh for a ride. These are all acts that encourage us into thinking that the future may not turn out to be so bad after all.
And yet, the Fakhruddin Ahmed government needs to reassure the nation that much more than a credible general election is what they have on offer. A reassurance of human rights, for instance. A guarantee of a level playing field, for example. And, of course, a belief throughout the country that those charged with corruption will be privy to due process of law, to the right to legal counsel as they deem necessary.
And there are a few other points the caretakers can take note of as they rev up their drive against corruption. There are quite a good number of politicians within the major parties, especially in the BNP, who have clearly sought to take cover as "reformists" in order not to have to explain their conduct in the last five years. Who deals with them? And what does the administration plan on doing about the local government and rural development ministry, the department Transparency International Bangladesh says has pushed corruption to unimaginable extremes?
There is a clear need to bring those who gave leadership to it to task. Much a similar exercise is called for in the case of those police officials who once turned a blind eye to the doings of militant Islamists in Bagmara but have, over these past months, kept pretending that they had nothing to do with the rise of these elements.
The children of Saifur Rahman are being dealt with under the law. But who nets the acquiescent or cooperative government officials who facilitated their corrupt doings? You can spot some of them in important places these days. Will, indeed can, the ACC call these bureaucrats to account for going along with the bad elements in the bad old days?
Does the administration remember that some bureaucrats need, in the interest of the republic, to be put through a rigorous investigation over the role they may have played when they converged, in all secrecy, at the office of a former Board of Investment chief in the queer days of the Iajuddin interim government, and then ran for cover when the media swooped on them?
Of course the chief adviser is right. A non-elected government is not the path to the future. But a non-elected government, in the extraordinary, incredible circumstances we live through, does hold the authority to point out the path to the future. It does that through reminding itself and the nation it governs that a moral basis is what ultimately defines the functionality of a state.
That moral basis was undercut in the last five years of elected civilian rule. And for a new elected dispensation to govern well, govern purposefully, a restoration of morality is clearly in order. The non-elected government that Fakhruddin Ahmed presides over can, if it does not stumble, if it does not speak in too many voices, if it keeps the heights in view, recreate the ambience for a new moral order in the nation's politics.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.
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