We need to ponder because the question posed before us is whether the democracy we have practiced so far has caused more grief than happiness. Above all, we need to see if there is any alternative to the unfettered, unadulterated parliamentary democracy that provided voice to our people, and actually led to our freedom struggle and birth of Bangladesh.

We have begun to question this form of democracy because we found to our dismay that the people we chose to represent our interests in the parliament had chosen, instead, their own interests, wealth and pursuit of happiness at our cost. Hence, we have this debate; whether the democratic way that we have followed is right for us, right for the country.

It is worthwhile, at this juncture, to recall how many times in the past we misdirected our accusations and threw away institutions built over time, because of the misdeeds of a section of the people who abused these institutions. It takes only a day to demolish edifices that took years to build.

Our first strike at parliamentary democracy occurred at the infancy of our nation, in 1975, ironically at the hands of the person who gave it to us in the first place. Confronted with a fast deteriorating economy, rampant corruption, and collapse of law and order, our leader amended the constitution to allow for a presidential system of government, and one-party rule with a rump parliament.

Sad to say, this action came from the leader who had declared only two years before that he believed in "(parliamentary) democracy, supremacy of the will of the people; government by the consent of the governed." So disenchanted was he with his own parliament, and distrustful of its members, that he readily threw away three years of hard work that went towards building a constitution that had made preservation of civil liberties its topmost priority.

There were two catastrophic fallouts from this highly flawed political action. First was the assassination of the father of the nation by a group of disgruntled military officers, and second was the sequence of military coups and counter-coups that ultimately brought to power General Ziaur Rahman, and imposition of Martial Law. Parliamentary democracy went south.

We welcomed the military intervention because we had a bitter taste in our mouths from three years of chaotic parliamentary politics, franchising of local governments to the leaders of the ruling party, rampant corruption, and a fast deteriorating law and order caused largely by the goons patronized by the ruling party.

Martial law under, a military leader who was also closely associated with our freedom fight, was viewed as a God-sent. With General Zia at the helm, we willingly put aside any thoughts of democracy. We even blamed democracy as the root of our misfortunes, since we identified our past parliamentarians and political leaders as the source of our misery, people who were the products of the democratic system.

But the tide would turn soon towards the democracy that we had decried earlier. A democratic rebirth, that became necessary due mainly to external pressure, would now lead us on to the praetorian politics that would dominate the country for the next decade.

A new political party rose from the ashes of old Pakistan with help from some political turncoats with political neophytes in tow, and directly aided and abetted by the military establishment. The amended constitution that allowed a presidential form of government came handy in supporting this praetorian politics.

The military-led democratic rebirth would again prove to be short lived, as the jerrybuilt political party would be mired in internal squabbles and allegations of corruption. As he was trying to bring a chaotic house to order, General Ziaur Rahman fell in the same tragic manner as the great leader before him -- at the hands of a few disgruntled army officers.

Assassination of Ziaur Rahman, and the later intra-party factionalism and strife would enable the armed forces to get back in the driver's seat. We would have the third demise of democracy with General Ershad in power, and the second coming of Martial Law.

This would be followed by a return to quasi-democracy, with the new military leader heading a new party that would include political opportunists and turn-coats, and hold state managed elections.

The result of this political shenanigan would be similar to what happened before. The cast of characters assembled by the carrot of power would soon cash in on that power, until corruption again became a byword for politics.

It took the country ten long years to get rid of the praetorian politics bestowed from above. It took years of struggle for people's will to return, and have the people's rights to elect their own representatives restored.

We have had three popular elections in the last fifteen years. These were free elections, although there have been the usual charges of bias from those who lost.

But they have been largely fair. The products of these elections did not come through a praetorian political system, and they were not foisted from above by a coterie. Some of the choices may not have been good, but, then, we had second chances to discard them if we wanted to.

It takes years of practice for parliamentary democracy to succeed. India has had it for over sixty years, and yet there are pitfalls. Often, we see, and hear of, members of the parliament and state legislatures in that country being hauled away for offences as dire as murder, yet the country chooses to remain with a system that, in the words of Winston Churchill, may be "the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

India chooses to remain on the path of parliamentary democracy because it has safeguards, rule of law, and checks and balances. We would have no need of this type of debate today if we also had similar rule of law and right checks and balances.

Ziauddin Choudhury is a freelance contributor to The Daily Star.