The Achilles' heel of our polity
Hafeejul Alam, Dhaka
In order to ensure a sustainable democracy, there is no alternative of adhering to an honest political culture of free and fair inter-party as well as intra-party elections. There is no denying the fact that democratic traditions amongst our political parties are almost non-existent, which means the party hierarchies including the top-most are determined, more often than not, by selection instead of election. As a result, on the one hand the possibility of inducting any new leadership in the party becomes almost zero thereby giving rise to a situation where political leadership becomes still and stagnant and on the other the incidence of authoritarianism reign supreme in all policy decisions and national strategies. The state of affairs go even worse when the leadership of the major political parties are dependent almost totally not upon their own abilities, but upon the legacy of the kindred celebrities who are no more in this world. For Bangladesh, it has almost become a craze to support or not to support a political party on the basis of one's acceptability of the deceased leaders instead of the living ones. Here lies the Achilles' heel of our polity. No wonder, Frederick T. Temple, the former World Bank Representative in Bangladesh so aptly pin-pointed two basic weaknesses of our democratic system in a recently held seminar at Dhaka. He pointed out that our political parties do not follow the democratic system themselves and that only the very rich people can get elected in the parliament. It is a pity that our election commission could not yet devise any procedure by which honest professionals, intellectuals, and dedicated leaders could find their way in the parliament and speak for the people. If the parliament consists of only the rich entrepreneurs, it would better serve as a chamber of commerce and industry as opposed to a parliament. One may be amazed to find out that the successive national budgets reflects nothing but the hopes and aspirations of the chamber bodies in contrast to those of vast spectrum of professionals and people. It is high time that the political parties, government and the election commission came forward and took positive steps to ameliorate these grave shortcomings of our political culture before it's too late.
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Undemocratic politics in democratic Bangladesh? |
