Democracy : Local Government and Fair Election
When election - free and fair election - is the key to democracy, an effective local government system is the key to democratic development of a society. One cannot think of an all pervasive economic development, and social advancement as well, without effective functioning of local governments at all tiers of administration. In fact, democracy and effective functioning of elected local bodies are synonymous.
Elections of 4,276 union level local governments have just been over under a new law, giving certain legal rights to the people's representatives to actively participate in the development planning of their respective constituencies. On top of all, the legislation has given the women a right to directly contest in the polls for three reserved seats of each Union Parishad. It is for the first time in the country's electoral history that the women have been given the right to directly contest in the elections of a local government.
There are reasons to believe that elections of women members to the local bodies has created the enormous scope for the Union Parishads to contribute to bring in real changes in the society, of course on the positive direction. It will help contribute political and economic empowerment of the rural women across the country. Besides, the rational dream of getting the women community, as an active partner, into the mainstream social, political and economic development process thus stands a greater chance to be a reality.
The Fair Election Monitoring Alliance (FEMA), a national level organisation studying elections and local governments, also believes that inclusion of the women in the local bodies and allowing them to directly contest in the elections of local governments would create positive impact in the society. FEMA secretary general Tariqul Gani says : "The economic empowerment of the rural women, especially by the NGOs, has led to their political empowerment which has manifested in the inclusion of women in the local bodies. Now the active participation of the women in the Union Parishads would contribute to their further economic empowerment.
Despite all the potentials of the newly elected Union Parishads, their effective functioning, however, will largely depend on the government's decision of both allocating adequate resources to them and allowing them to mobilise resources from the local sources.
It has been seen in the past that whenever a government had decided to strengthen the local bodies, the bureaucracy had untidily resisted the initiatives. The reason behind the bureaucratic resistance is very clear : Strengthening of the local governments means decentralisation of power that eventually tantamount to increase of powers of the elected representatives of the people. But, increase of powers of the elected representatives means ensuring some way or other, accountability of the administration - a thing which the bureaucracy does not feel comfortable with.
Under this circumstance, the pronounced objective of the law - devolution of power - is bound to be frustrated, in case the government fails to make sure that the newly elected parishads get adequate resources to make development plans and implement them as well. This is true for the local bodies at every tiers.
To go back to the original point, it was really a significant phenomenon that a large number of women enthusiastically responded to the newly made legal provision for the females to contest directly in the polls. A total of 44,134 females contested for 12,828 posts of members in 4276 unions. Of them, 592 were elected unopposed.
While running in the polls, the women candidates attracted a lot of females in the process of electoral campaign, not to mention the male ones. The most of the women who got directly involved in the campaign across the country, had never been engaged in such a large-scale socio-political activity in the rural areas. Thus, the elections have given a lot of women an exposure to the rural political world which had so far been completely unfamiliar to them. This new phenomenon will definitely help change the attitudes of the rural women, which would eventually contribute to changing the conventional thinking patterns of women in the rural Bangladesh.
Besides, in the process of campaign, a lot of women issues came up for discussions between the candidates and the electorate. With the elections now over and the women members ready to directly represent their constituencies, the Union Parishads are bound to change their conventional roles: The Parishads have to take up social and economic programmes aimed at changing the lots of rural women. Even the scopes of better implementation of some conventional government and non-government programmes, aiming at economic empowerment of the women, have been created with the women elected on the local bodies.
It should be noted here that a woman candidate had to cover a constituency three times larger than that of her male counterpart. Because, under the new law concerned, one male (general) member is to come from each of the nine wards that comprises a union, while electorate of three wards elect a woman member. It is really funny that the male policy makers, who usually consider the women to be 'physically weaker' than their male counterparts, entrust them (the females) with harder jobs. The legislators need to think about the self-contradictory element inherent in the legislation concerned and should really remove the gender discrimination in terms of equal representation of men and women on the local bodies.
The country's policy makers and other authorities concerned need to pay attention to some more things, if they really mean free and fair election - free from the administrative manipulation by governing parties and fair especially in the sense of creating an atmosphere where money will not influence the results of the polls.
There are allegations that the just concluded local government elections also saw administrative manipulation in many areas. FEMA secretary general said that his organisation observed polling in 13,700 stations across the country through around 15 thousand trained observers : "According to our observation, the just concluded UP elections were not free from administrative manipulations." Advocate Fazlul Huq, executive director of the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST) that has filed a writ petition challenging certain aspects of the law regarding local bodies at the village level, echoed the FEMA secretary general : "As we have seen the elections, administrative manipulation by the ruling party was very much there. In some cases the people have resisted the ruling party attempts of manipulations, while in the remaining places it went unchallenged." The fact that the Election Commission has taken various kinds of punitive measures against 40 polling officials including SPs, TNOs and OCs also speaks about the attempts of administrative manipulations.
Whatever the case may be, our election system is infected with the killer virus called 'administrative manipulation' since long, and the nation cannot have a sound electoral system without addressing the problem. To address the problem, the nation has to strengthen the country's election officers who work directly under the 'independent' Election Commission - just EC preaching that the administration should behave during polls, will not be able to solve the problem.
Even if we take it for granted that at the central level, the EC is really independent, we have no reasons to accept that the EC's agents at district and thana levels are also independent. Literally subordinate to the administrative officers at all tiers, they are totally dependent on the local administration in all respects including logistics. The status of the district election officers is much lower than the Deputy Commissioners', not to mention Thana Nirbahi Officers. One cannot expect that a lower ranking officer with much lower salaries and status like Election Officer can command an all powerful officer like Deputy Commissioner during the polls. It is therefore imperative for the nation to upgrade the status of the election officers and equip them with adequate logistics, so that they can conduct polls without any dependence on the executive branch of the state which is controlled by the party in power.
Present Chief Election Commissioner Mohammad Abu Hena also admits that in an ideal situation the district election officers should take lead in conducting polls at the district level. But, according to him, the nation has to go a long way to get that 'ideal situation', because it involves some major administrative reforms.
To free the local government elections from the influence of money, laws must be enacted imposing ceiling on the election expenditure. But just enactment of legislation will not do. We have a law under which no candidate in the parliamentary elections in allowed to spend more than Taka three lakhs as election expenditure. But the law has already become a farce, as it is an open secret that the candidates sometimes spend crores to get elected to parliament. So, what is important is that the Election Commission has to have a mechanism of its own to effectively monitor, at the field level, the polling expenditures of the candidates. The system must be there so that the EC can receive, and dispose of, complaints from the rival candidates, even from the neutral citizens, regarding polling expenditures by the candidates. And for this, the Election Commission has to have appropriate infrastructure and trained officials.
Electoral violence is another very important problem which should be addressed more effectively. Around 50 people were killed and one thousand injured in the last elections. A total 399 centres - out 39285 - faced closure due to various types of violence. The casualty figure is reportedly much higher than that of the previous election which was held in 1992. Every death is painful and any killing is undesirable. But if we take into account the fact that the society is now pathologically divided into two conflicting political camps and present rate of crimes in general is much higher than that of 1992, the casualty was not that big. Even then the casualties could be minimized at the national level, if the government and EC could do what Uttaron, a local NGO operating in three southern districts, could have done in Sathkhira, Jessore and Khulna.
The Uttaron took extensive programme to motivate both candidates and voters not to adopt any unfair means in the polls. "We even held joint meetings of all the political parties operating in the areas, organised joint projection meetings of the rival candidates and made them urge upon the people not to take any attempt of rigging in favour of any candidate," says A T M Mahtab Uddin Ahmed. "The method worked very well." There is, however, no reason to look very negatively at the fact of higher number of polling stations facing closure. Closure of polling stations and prompt decision of cancelling the polls in the face of violence rather helped minimize the casualties, as the aggrieved or affected parties did not need to physically retaliate the attempt of rigging by their counterparts.
We think the Election Commission's policy to stop voting immediately after any violent incident in or around a centre is bound to contribute positively in the management of future elections. If the supporters of the candidates get the EC message that attempts of rigging polls would eventually bring in no results to the violators of law and such attempts would rather compel them to face re-polling in the centre concerned, the tendency of violence in the polling stations would definitely decrease.
However, we cannot get an ideal situation in a day. But the nation has to pay dearly, in terms of economic development, if it has to wait long to see that the local governments are set up at every tier of the administration, from the village to the division level. Because, without allowing the elected representatives of the people to make and implement development plans in their respective constituencies, there can be no democracy as such.
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