Going Deeper
Is election the only way out?
Efforts in the post-emergency period in Bangladesh appear to be directed at instituting electoral democracy; electoral democracy being defined as: "Any regime in which governmental offices are filled as a result of contested elections. Only if the opposition is allowed to compete, win, and assume office is a regime democratic."
Scholars have posited three pre-conditions as essential for a regime to be called an electoral democracy: ex- ante uncertainty, ex-post irreversibility, and repeatability. In other words self-inflicted coups d'etat or autogol (when an elected president suspends the constitution and converts his regime into a dictatorship), even if supported by the people at its initiation, poses the possibility of becoming a democracy without "demos."
When Peruvian president Alberto Fujimoro had a presidential coup d'etat, then US secretary of state James Baker rebuked him by saying that one cannot have democracy by destroying it.
Another American politician in the 1920s advised that democracy deficit can only be rectified by more democracy. The question, however, remains whether the verdict of the people received through elections is to be given supreme value and is to be regarded as the arbiter of decisions taken by those elected.
If so, then one has to judge rigorously the quality of democracy and of the "demos" in any given country. One has to ensure whether minimalist expression of democracy through electoral democracy should not be improved into the maximalist version by including liberal and deliberative democracy as well.
While the centrality of elections is recognised as the principal agent of democracy, the liberal democrats would prefer a political system (defined by Juan Linz): "As democratic when it allows the free formulation of political preferences, through the use of basic freedoms of association, information, and communication, for the purpose of free competition between leaders to validate at regular intervals by non-violent means their claim to rule."
Liberal democrats, writes Professor Maxwell Cameron, go beyond electoral democracy through insistence on the establishment of liberal rights to guarantee free flow of information before the elections; and as political scientist Giovani Sartori put it: "He who delegates his power can also lose it; elections are not necessarily free, and representation is not necessarily genuine."
Liberal democrats, therefore, would not like to lose freedom after elections, in some ways similar to the refusal of Henry David Thoreau to give up his rights totally to the elected representatives. He wrote: "The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to -- for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well -- is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it."
Centuries back, James Madison advised caution in the formation of government lest it turns on the minority whose voice may not be heard or listened to.
Since rule of law is inherent in any democratic set up and necessary for the citizens to safeguard their rights, the argument for a constitutional state in which all civilian and political actors would remain subservient to the rule of law becomes relevant. But then such a situation may give rise to tension between constitutionalism and majoriatarianism.
In countries like Bangladesh, particularly in view of the events leading to the declaration of emergency (basically due to plunder and anarchy made possible by brute majoritarianism by the alliance government), supremacy of the rule of law would be preferable.
If one were to look back to the US presidential elections of 2000 then one would notice the respect shown by Al Gore and the American people to the US Supreme Court's decision declaring George W. Bush as the winner.
One must, however, concede to the fact that underdeveloped societies lack legal culture in which the courts' decisions may not be taken to be supreme, and primordial loyalties (as invariant characteristic of tribal societies), are more preponderant.
In these societies, the people have to be cautious, particularly where poverty is endemic and corruption is pervasive, in giving up their total authority to those elected given Giovanni Sartori's caution that elections may not be necessarily free and representation may not be necessarily genuine.
Besides, elections are not the only aspect of democracy. Deliberations outside the parliament should also be listened to. Unfortunately, the institutions that would support liberal and deliberative democracy are still fragile in Bangladesh, and strengthening of these institutions has a long gestation period.
We have been subject to authoritarian rule for so long that we are unable to ask for our rights. We are so uneducated that we are not aware of our rights. We are so poor that our votes can be purchased. Who then will guarantee good governance and that promises will be kept after the votes have been cast ?
A vibrant civil society is an essential requirement for keeping vigil that misgovernance does not recur. In addition, one may consider forming a body or bodies (or strengthening the ones already formed) to keep the government on its toes and to guard against majoritarianism.
Bangladesh simply cannot afford a repeat of the kleptocracy practiced with abandon in the pre-emergency period.
Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador.
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