In the weekend of the first anniversary of 1/11, reports from Bangladesh are of increasing restlessness. Indeed, even the regime realises it, hence the Chief Advisor’s nod to withdrawing the emergency and talking to the political parties. Dr Shahdin Malik made the case for a return to electoral democracy at the soonest in a lucid article in yesterday’s Prothom Alo. This is translated below.

1/11 anniversary posts in Deshi blogosphere.

Dhaka Shohor rambles
Rumi shows the reality
Tacit discusses highs and lows
Rehan asks questions
Mukti won’t get fooled again

UV argued the case for democracy here, here and here.

Increasing restlessness – Dr Shahdin Malik

Let’s begin with some things we know about democracy. Firstly, democracy can’t sprint along a straight path. It rocks along, sometimes falters or summersaults, in a troubled manner. Secondly, democracy necessarily means some disorderliness, and, if not always, often a messy state. And thirdly, only solution to problems of democracy is even more democracy. Even though not directly related to democracy, some more things we know: oft-quoted in spoken Bangla — mairer upor oshudh nai (no better cure than a beating); or another — danda marle shob thanda (stick will cool everything).

Reducing democracy, if necessary with sticks, in order to fix it, is and old tendency. Not too old though, this tendency, as democracy itself is only 200 years or so old. Or much less so in the real sense of the word, not only in our country but across the world. In much of Western Europe, democracy is only slightly older than 50 years. In Eastern Europe, voting rights came just the other day, 15 or so years ago. Even American democracy is not that much older than ours. We often forget that most non-white Americans got voting rights in 1964 through President Johnson’s civil rights laws. Much like our minority communities, and in some cases women, American minorities and women faced intimidation against voting as late as the late 1970s.

It was only the other day that the influence of black money, extortion and the mob ended in the democracies of Europe or America. Senator Joe Kenney, JFK’s father, is alleged to have been one of the biggest dealers of contra brand liquor during the prohibition era, for example.

While a handful of western countries suspended democracy for ‘the greater good’, most applied even more democracy — if one round of voting was flawed, they tried five rounds. And that is the biggest difference between us and them.

Democracy means disorderliness, anarchy, mafia in politics, and for an orderly society we need a dose of beating, a round of left-right — that was the theory behind the suspension of democracy in countries like Germany, Italy, Greece or Spain. Then came World War II. After the war, it took another couple of decades to restore democracy to a working condition. Since the 1970s, those countries have maintained democracy successfully.

2.

When it comes to fixing a machine, whether it is a power plant or a car, we need to shut it down temporarily. But what is true for a machine is patently not so for democracy. Unfortunately for us, we apply this engineering logic to repair the society. Pakistan is the land closest to us to apply this temporary shutdown pending repair logic. Pakistani democracy was deeply troubled in the mid-1950s, so Ayub Khan shut it down for a while. It has remained suspended ever since. In fact, undemocracy is the norm there, they release it once a while temporarily. Whether the Pakistani is democracy is shut or open in this January is hard to tell. But one doesn’t need to be a seer to observe the river of blood flowing in that country.

To maintain democracy in working order, our politicians devised a formula to shut it down for three months. And now they are paying for that formula. And we are also paying. After all, we too did celebrate their invention.

3.

This January, every television channel has been showing the anarchy of last January with commentary. We spent the first days of last January in much anxiety, no doubt. No doubt that we feared of the worst violence. 22 January, the day of the scheduled election, was looking like the grim day of political Armageddon. So we all rejoiced on 12 January to be free from that curse. Fear and joy are both emotions that sit outside the cold logic. And when one is happy, one doesn’t want to analyse whether the happiness is justified. And neither did I.

But now I’m wondering. The logic is rearing its head. Increasingly it appears that the expectations of last January were irrational. But why the realisation of this irrationality a year later, and not any time sooner?

4.

I hope Amartya Sen’s thesis is not applicable everywhere. Learnt folks have summarised his thesis for a commoner like me in four words — no famine in democracy. I hope at least in 2008 Bangladesh his thesis is not applicable. The anxiety over prices reached a peak earlier this January. Anxiety was for the middle class, for the poor who have been forgotten in the past year, it was hunger.

The Government was busy with election process, political reform and corruption. In the previous few years, folks in power were busy mucking up the election process and making money for power politics. The Caretaker Government have spent the last year in a jihad against the old regime. There were naturally some success and some failure, but as far as the intention goes, it was all well and good. After all, no one wants a polluted society. The rot begins from the head, so we don’t want the top layer of the society rotten. That many high and mighty is now feeling the stick — not literally, but in a legal sense — is perhaps not troubling many. Of course some of them are trying to wiggle out through legal loopholes — but even that is normal.

But the expectation was much more grandiose. And the chance of meeting them is getting slimmer by the day. Sure the flood and Sidr affected things, but the government’s list of ‘didn’t do’ or ‘couldn’t do’ has got bigger in the past year.

No, I won’t make a laundry list. But the fear remains that perhaps we made a mistake suspending democracy in order to fix it. After all, what other society over the past two, three, four decades have tried so many experiments to fix democracy by suspending for a while, applying engineering solutions, before releasing it again? Bakshal, then martial law, then another martial law — did they not all have the same logic, that democracy isn’t working?

There is fighting, killing, anarchy, economic breakdown, hunger for power, corruption — the only solution is to suspend democracy. Then came Bakshal. Then came the imitation democracy under army.

One can’t imitate democracy, even though there is hardly any undemocratic government that didn’t try to do so by rigging election. Undemocratic governments try imitation democracy, and in the games of power the poor masses are hurt.
Undoubtedly our politics is polluted. Undoubtedly it is full of thugs. Undoubtedly an attraction for politics is corruption. Undoubtedly there is a risk that the corrupt thugs may return to power through an election, returning the country to anarchy in the process. But it is also undoubtedly true that there are still many good folks in politics. These people are in politics because of their ideology. But, it will be futile to make an imitation democracy with good folks. Imitation democracy is not democracy.

I fear that the society is hypnotised into an attempt at this imitation democracy.

5.

A harsh critic would say that other than changing personalities in a few top jobs, nothing really significant has been done in the past year. Yes, there is an anti-corruption drive that may well have a lasting impact. But other than shuffling people, there hasn’t been much institutional reforms at all. Bureaucracy is unchanged — to get a three day leave granted one still need a thousand approvals. Electricity and fertiliser are unchanged — we still don’t have what we didn’t have a year ago.

I don’t know anything more than what I see in the papers, but it seems that the police force may get a dose of reform. Politicians are being taught the lesson of reforms. You can take the horse to the creek, but can you make it drink?

The economy is stagnant. Other than ever rising prices, what can this Government show to the 70 million or so poor? It is becoming clearer than ever before that to get anything done, intentions and talents are not enough, you need mass political support. Let me return to what I’ve said earlier — there is no substitute to even more democracy. We have never really tried to expand democracy. Local government is now an arena of more democracy.

But on local government, we are stuck in a weird notion that local government elections have to be without political parties. Those who contest these elections are supposed to be non-partisan. Army governments started this rule to keep politicians away from elections. Without existing parties, it’s easier to form king’s parties, and that’s what happened.

Without political parties, we want to create neutral, non-partisan governments at the local level. Of course the bureaucracy would want this, after all, it’s easier to control folks without party backing.

The Local Government Commission has made a lot of good recommendations. But we need be aware that big reforms take time. Perhaps it’s better to start with changing things at the margin. Otherwise we’ll remain in undemocracy forever, searching for better democracy.

According to the Election Commission, about 20 million voters have been registered. I can’t fathom why these voters can’t elect their union, upazilla, zilla and municipality councils? And of course these elections will have to be on the basis of party politics, otherwise there will be a risk of imitation democracy.

Some will ask, aren’t we sending politics and the related corruption, anarchy and fighting into the villages? Of course we are. Without parties, we don’t have elections, politics, or development. Wouldn’t multiple votes cost money? How much will it cost? 10 billion taka? 20 billion taka? This year’s budget was about 6,000 billion taka. Many big wigs are reputed to have stolen 10 billion taka. 10 billion taka for more democracy is not much.

6.

There will be increased restlessness if we don’t start in the electoral path right away. While some people keep shouting that ‘we can’t allow this government to fail’, no one is actually claiming that the government has failed. Sooner the elections are held, the more successful the government will be.

The problem is, there is not many to speak about the local government. Many of us, the urban middle class, don’t even have much idea about the union or upazilla councils. Our thoughts and ideas — and the write ups and seminars — are about the national government and the problems of the city dwellers. We have little headache about the local government. We all know about the Mazdar Hossain case about the judiciary. That ruling was made in 1999. Seven years earlier in 1992, in the Qudrat-e-Ilahi case, the Supreme Court asked the government to hold upazilla elections within six months. We never much bothered about that ruling.

Within next few months the Election Commission needs to hold local elections. This election must be on a political basis, and if necessary parliament election must be brought forward for this.

Finally, congratulations to the five new advisors. Here is to them working hard to expedite the election.

Dr Shahdin Malik is a Supreme Court advocate and Director of the BRAC University School of Law. Translated by Jyoti Rahman.