Perspective

Bangladesh being independent in 1971, faced a lot of problems to put into reality her core objective i.e. democracy, for what we raised our voice collectively against the discrimination of Pakistani junta.  Bangladesh is a very small country in the world map, situated at the South Asia, surrounded by her giant neighbor country India with three sides, concerned with the maintenance of internal cohesion, ensuring peace, solidarity and fraternity, protecting and if possible augmenting national power, conducting peaceful faring policy i.e. “friends to all malice to none” through upholding democracy. But the journey of democratization what is the long cherished dream of the people of our country has been dissatisfied since its independence and failed to institutionalize democracy in our country. To understand well the challenges of institutionalization of democracy in our country, however, we should have clear-cut idea about democracy, institutionalization and institutionalization of democracy.

We know that the term “democracy” has many meanings but in the modern time or world its use signifies that the ultimate authority belongs to citizens. democracy, in brief, can be summarized as a mode of decision-making about collectively binding rules and policies over which the people exercise control, and the most democratic arrangement is that where all members of the collectivity enjoy effective equal rights to take part in such decision-making directly  one, that is to say, which realizes to the greatest conceivable degree the principles of popular control and equality in its exercise.

However, institutionalization, according to Huntington, is the process by which organizations and procedures acquire value and stability. He further said that the level of institutionalization of any political system and democracy can be identified by the adaptability, complexity, autonomy and coherence of its organizations and procedures. Therefore, “if these criteria can be identified and measured, democracy can be compared in terms of their levels of institutionalization”.

Institutionalization of democracy accordingly is the practice by which democratic organizations and procedures acquire value and stability and by democratic organizations, I mean the legislature, executive, judiciary, political parties, pressure groups, and bureaucrats. When we will see that these organizations or institutions, for a definite time work well without hindrance, according to their respective rules and regulations, we can say that democracy in our country has become institutionalized. In a word, by institutionalization of democracy I mean a process to establish democracy as a part of the cultural, social and political system, or organization.

In the wake of the demise of the cold war Francis Fukuyama”s “The end of history” prognosticating the democracy”s triumph as ultimate creed of mankind took the world by storm.” Years later President Bill Clinton declared during his second inaugural address that “for the first time in all history more people on the planet live under democracy than dictatorship.” Consequently, democracy had been chosen by the leaders and people of Bangladesh as the ruling system with a view to ensuring people”s rights, freedom of expression, freedom of movement and development. But Bangladesh failed to institutionalize democracy. Question may be raised that Why do we need to institutionalize democracy in our country? Was it wrong decision to choose democracy as the ruling system in Bangladesh? Some one can say that yes it was. But my answer is that the decision was right.  Instead of democracy, now a day, development is impossible. If we look at the Indonesia we see that during the regime of President Suharto, an autocratic government, the country could not achieve satisfactory development. People did not get satisfaction on that time. And ultimately the government transferred the power to the people i.e. to the democratic ruler. So we can say that institutionalization of democracy is indispensable for any country because it talks about people”s goodness. Now if we look at our country, questions may be raised that what are the challenges we are facing to institutionalize democracy in our country?

We know that Our legislature is not considered as the pivot of all kinds of goings-on, executive members influence over the decisions of other organs of government, judiciary is not properly as well as effectively separated, political parties are very much conservative and old-fashioned, cannot be the reflection of hopes and aspirations of the people, pressure groups are the mouthpieces of particular class and political party, and bureaucrats think themselves as higher than the people and believe in red-tapism and procrastination which fetch untold miseries to the people and pull down to institutionalize democracy. Subsequently, these are the vital challenges for our country to institutionalize democracy because if we look at Britain and united states of America what are considered as the pioneer of democracy we see that they have strong, adaptable, coherent political institutions: effective bureaucracies, well organized political partied, a high degree of popular participation in public affairs and working system of civilian control over the military.

Military intervention in our politics is another facet of volatile democracy. S.E. Finer said, “The armed forces have three massive political advantages over civilian organizations: a marked superiority in organization, a highly emotionalized symbolic status, and a monopoly of arms. They form a prestigious corporation or order, enjoying overwhelming superiority in the means of applying force.” Consequently, having overwhelming power, sometimes it is seen, the military intervenes in politics. For example, in1958 there were a series of military intervention in politics throughout the world. That was the year when Marshal Sarit abrogated the constitution of Thailand and made himself dictator; in which Generals Ayub Khan, Kassim and Abboud seized power in Pakistan, Iraq and the Sudan respectively; in which, also, General Ne Win was raised to power in Burma and General De Gaulle in France. In Bangladesh, we have seen that the military intervened in our politics several times which stopped the institutionalization of democracy. Question may be raised, what is the problem if military intervenes in politics? History says that when they come into politics, they recruit army personnel in the administration, ban political parties, and suppress people liberty and freedom which are not conducive to democracy. So military must be civilianized.

One of the important causes for what we could not institutionalize democracy in our country is to fail to manage political violence. There have many political parties in our country but the two political parties are main i.e., the Awami League (AL) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The relationship between these two parties is very bad and they always take stand differently. When one of these parties goes to the opposition side, it adopts the way of violence, strike, and bloodshed to fulfill their demands. And when it turns into the uncontrolled way, the tempo of democracy does not run. For example, the journey of democratization which paves the way for the institutionalization of democracy in our country from 1991 was hindered in 2007. And this was the product of political violence between the two main political parties.

To institutionalize democracy we need conscious people and consciousness comes from education. And if these people are void of education, knowledge and learning, institutionalization of democracy is totally impossible. If we look at the West African and central African countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and in Middle East like Algeria, Syria, Turkey and in Asian countries like Pakistan, Thailand, Laos, Burma, and Indonesia, we see that these courtiers failed to institutionalize democracy because of high rate of illiteracy. Being a developing country we suffer from real shortages of food, literacy, education, wealth, income, health and productivity. Political leaders of our country are staying away from the democratic values, walk-out of parliament by the opposition party, dominance of prime minister, unbridled corruption, unorganized political parties, lack of chain of command and imbalance between “input” i.e. the demands of the people and “output” i.e. the decisions of the rulers are also vital challenges to institutionalize democracy in Bangladesh.

A further major challenge designates the democracy what we are exercising is not our invented but we imported it from the western countries, we have to make this democracy suitable, applicable and adjusted in the atmosphere of our country. Because the culture, environment, situation, economic conditions of western countries like USA, UK, France etc. are enormously different from our country.  Keeping it in mind, we have to proceed with a view to institutionalizing democracy in our region.
Constitutional obstacles is another setback to institutionalize democracy because according to the article 70 of our constitution “a person elected as a member of parliament at an election at which he was nominated as a candidate by a political party shall vacate his seat if he resigns from that party or votes in parliament against that party”. For example, if a party decides to pass an undemocratic law, the parliament members must vote in favor of his/her party otherwise his/her seat will vacate. So this is undoubtedly a great challenge. Another important challenge is that we have to promote our political culture to institutionalize democracy in Bangladesh. Our political culture is parochial, the people are not conscious about politics because the people who live in satellite area most of them are illiterate and are influenced by their male members i.e. husband, father and uncle etc. and this is not congenial feature of democracy.

Latterly, it is evident that though Bangladesh is abundant in natural resources and man power, the country can”t achieve modernization and development because of proper institutionalization of democracy. Ipso-facto, to ensure democratic process and political stability in Bangladesh, the need for institutionalization of democracy is indispensable. We have to carefully proceed to institutionalize democracy and democratic institutions because it is multifaceted and touches “constitutions, electoral systems, political parties, legislative arrangements, the judiciary, bureaucracy, pressure groups, central and local government, and formal and traditional government structures”. And if we can overcome the above challenges day by day, our dream to institutionalize democracy in our country will come into being.

Author: Muzahidul Islam