The fundamental problem
Extreme centralisation of power made Bangladesh vulnerable to despotism
Nahid Islam’s 3 August speech (posted here) from Shaheed Minar, called for not just resignation of Sheikh Hasina but also political reforms to ensure that a despotism such as hers does not return to Bangladesh. Over a year earlier, BNP had also proposed constitutional reform following a free and fair election so that a future despot can be thwarted. That is, there is a broad agreement that constitution had problems even before Hasina rigged three elections to stay in power through violence and coercion. The debate is about what the problems, possible solutions, and how we can go about implementing these.
This post is about the problems.
Before 2011, there used to be a peculiar debate in Bangladesh around the ‘return to the 1972 constitution’ — that all the country’s political problems were due to a deviation from the ‘high ideals’ of that constitution. However, as Abul Mansur Ahmed wrote in 1973, incorporating those lofty ideals in the constitution sowed the seed of future trouble. These high ideals are still there, and other various superfluous stuff has been inserted, such as Islam as the state religion, or mandatory hanging of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s portrait in state institutions!
Clearly one set of problem with the constitution is the sheer amount of junk that the document contains. However, one could argue that these oddities in and of themselves don’t have much functional implications. Rather, there were various other functional features of the constitution — in its 1972 original version as well as its amended version that existed in 2011 — that made our polity extremely vulnerable to despotism.
These functional features — unitary state with no effective local government, first past the post electoral system, centralisation of power in the office of prime minister, bar on floor-crossing — made for a winner-takes-all politics that culminated in despotism.
Let’s take this one step at a time.
Our modern political history began as a province in British India, which became a province of Pakistan —in both cases, we were conceived as a federating unit of a larger state. When we became independent, we inherited the provincial state machinery and turned it into a sovereign unitary republic.
It makes good sense for us to be unitary state. Federations work best when the federating states are ethnically/culturally/geographically/economically heterogenous. Texas is a very different place compared with New York. So it makes sense for Texas and New York to have separate health departments. I am not sure one can make the same argument between Chittagong and Khulna. So, turning Bangladesh into a federation of several states will mean multiplicating a lot of government machinery without much benefit.
But this doesn’t mean we need to be as centralised as we are now.
Interestingly, the three pre-1990 govts, in their ‘autocratic’ ways, did experiment with devolving power out of Dhaka. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in his Bakshal, envisaged district and city mayors and governors who would have power over local law and order and infrastructure — by way of example, a Police Super would be sent from Dhaka for a for a fixed term, but would be answerable to the local mayor or governor. Ziaur Rahman envisaged gram shorkar that would be responsible for local dispute resolution (salish), and HM Ershad initiated the upazillas where the chairman is responsible for local service delivery.
Before independence, Ayub Khan gave development functions to ‘basic democrats’ — roughly equivalent to union council members — who also constituted the electorate for an all powerful presidency. And over a century ago, the British Raj initiated elected local councils in our part of the world.
All these regimes and governments wanted to devolve power because they feared the power of urban elites, and wanted to use the local governments to boost their own patronage network.
Between 1991 and 2011, MPs of both main parties strongly and unanimously opposed these local governments, because they didn’t want their powers diluted. As a result, all these local government officials had absolutely no practical power at all.
And the MPs opposed any local government power because local affairs were the only space where they could exercise any power.
In fact, it’s even stronger than that —our political culture is such that our politicians are judged on their success or failure at the local level.
Given our unitary state, there was no immediate need for an upper house of the parliament. In a unicameral legislature, the opposition members usually have very limited legislative power. Given the Article 70 of the constitution that prohibits floor-crossing, even government MPs had very limited legislative power.
The Article 70 didn’t arise in a vacuum. There was a pernicious historical background. In the parliamentary politics Bengal and Pakistan between 1937 and 1958, legislators used to frequently trade votes for money/favours. Mujib saw this first hand. As a young leader, Mujib was asked to to stand guard outside a veteran legislator’s toilet! So he was adamant that we needed an article against floor crossing. Hence the Article 70 in the 1972 constitution.
While the Article 70 stopped our MPs from speaking their mind, but they could still act as legislators. In theory, they could initiate bills. They could participate in the committee process. They could act as reviewers of the bureaucracy, and vet key appointments. The opposition MPs could have a strong role to play in these review/vetting processes.
But what incentive did any MP have to do any of these between 1991 and 2011?
In those two decades of electoral democracy, neither party leadership actually wanted the legislators to show independence or initiative. They preferred that laws were written by bureaucrats of the law ministry on the instruction of the prime minister (or her office), and the parliament would just rubber stamp the legislations. They didn’t want any reviews or vetting of any executive decision or appointment. They didn’t want these when in power, and they didn’t want these when in opposition.
So, the typical MP would not get any credit from the leadership for being a good legislator.
What was an MP to do then but to turn to local affairs?
The MP became, for five years, the elected nawab of the area. They were the heads of local school and masjid committees and sport clubs and cultural societies —and those were the formal roles. Informally, they decided on how the local government machinery was run, and what projects were implemented and by whom. By the time Sheikh Hasina returned to power, MPs would get formal allocation of development funds to disperse.
ABM Musa wrote about having to perform marital disputes in his capacity as an MP. That was in 1973. Things weren’t much different four decades later.
The party leaderships used to leave the MPs alone in these local affairs. They needed 151 persons who could get elected and remain elected. These people were typically from the family of some dead leader, or local Robinhood/Don figures, or rich businessmen who could buy the nomination.
A good MP was one who looked after their area — elaka’r unnoyon, elaka-bashi’r chakri-bebsha’r shujog these were what they were judged by. Why then would an MP want competition from the upazilla chairman or city council mayor? So they opposed local government empowerment. And less powerful the local bodies were, the more the electorate judged the MP for their local performance.
This created a feedback loop —MPs stopped being national legislators and became local politicians. And in Dhaka, without a functional legislature, the executive’s power became ever more centralised.
Over time, we ended up in a situation where people who get elected couldn’t run ministries or drive policy, and people who could do these essential functions of governance couldn’t get elected. So prime ministers tended to appoint party men (and sometime women) as ministers, and then run the country through unelected advisors. In some cases, ministers and advisors clashed and there was paralysis. In other cases, ministers engaged in corruption while advisors made policy.
This was the dysfunctional democracy post-1991, even before Hasina did away with it in 2011. And the dysfunction was compounded by the electoral system and historical factors.
We inherited the first-past-the-post (FPP) system from the British, which magnifies electoral swings. In 2001, BNP and allies won a two-thirds majority. In 2008, the same alliance got around a tenth of the seats. But Awami League’s vote share actually increased between 1996 and 2001, while BNP vote share was higher in 2008 than 1991.
Under FPP, elections are not a contest for votes, but for the seats. Parties wanted to win 151 seats, so they nominated people who could win and retain these seats. They didn’t want legislators. They wanted people who could be good nawabs of these 300 seats. Even in opposition, the leadership didn’t want people with a tough legal minds who could pursue government corruption, or a policy wonk who could shape ideas, preferring instead people who could organise the street politics and election campaigns in the districts.
The institutions we created/inherited shaped the post-1990 politics.
After 1991, BNP realised that it had power over so many things, while AL realised that it had power over absolutely nothing. Hasina immediately set on winning power, vowing to not let the government have a moment of peace. Her party did what it knew well —andolon. BNP panicked and rigged a bye-election in Magura, giving AL a casus beli. After 1996, BNP figured that andolon would not do, so they introduced the alliance concept. After 2001, AL did andolon, but also formed a bigger alliance and introduced behind-the-scene machinations, leading to 1/11. Meanwhile, each successive government took centralisation to a new level.
And all this, because losing is not an option in a winner take all world.
At least before 1/11, the existence of two strong parties created some form of balance of power. That balance was destroyed by the infamous minus-2 misadventure. Then Hasina rammed through the 15th Amendment and the rest, as they say, has been history.
Politics has begun anew after 36 July, but simply restoring the status quo ante and going back to a constitutional set up as it existed before Hasina’s despotism will not do. Even if our future leaders are democratic, and we avoid another would-be despot, the old system leaves us vulnerable to a despotism.
This is why we need reform.
A tribute to the heroes of July
We need reforms so that we don’t need to make another such video for the next generation.
Further reading
Noah Smith, 21 March 2023
Liberalism is battered but not yet broken
Martin Wolf, 10 Jan 2024
The prisoner and the oligarch: the struggle for Georgia’s future
Wendell Steavenson, 5 Feb 2024
Where democracy is most at risk
The Economist, 14 Feb 2024
Jayati Ghosh, 10 June 2024
Why India should create dozens of new states
The Economist, 20 June 2024
Why can’t India accept that the people of Bangladesh toppled Sheikh Hasina?
Tanim Ahmed, 14 August 2024
Bangladeshis Have a Chance to Write a New Story
Tahmina Anam, 24 Aug 2024
Salman Rafi Sheikh, 2 Oct 2024
নাহিদ ইসলাম interviewed, 15 Nov 2024
Top Indian editor says New Delhi adopts a “Wait-and-Watch” approach on Dhaka situation
Siddharth Varadarajan, 19 Nov 2024
Muhammad Yunus on the Race to Build Bangladesh 2.0
Prof Yunus interviewed, 21 Nov 2024
That's why need to get rid of the floor crossing ban altogether. Even allow the MPs to do a vote of no confidence to get rid of the PM if they want. After that we need to establish a federal Republic.
I think we should have decentralised government even if we have a similar ethnicity and geography. I have much lower faith in technocracy than you do. We should also ban or limit any fiscal transfers from richer to poorer states. Subsidising failure is useless.