Last week, Julia Gillard had to resign as leader of the Australian Labor party and Prime Minister after losing an internal party leadership ballot among MPs to her arch-rival in the party, the former and now new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. It was a dramatic twist of events, as Gillard originally became leader after ousting Rudd through the same process three years earlier.
The reason for the leadership contest derives from Gillard’s low standing in public opinion polls, and concerns in the eyes of some her fellow party colleagues that her performance as Prime Minister of Australia was not good enough. Against a background of continual leadership challenges and rumours of a fresh leadership run by Rudd, Gillard called a leadership poll against Rudd, who defeated her with 57 votes to her 45.
Before the ballot, Julia Gillard was far behind opponent Tony Abott, the leader of the opposition Liberal Party in national opinion polls, with the general election scheduled to take place just a few months away in September. With a desperate desire to influence public opinion in their favour, a majority of Labor Party MPs agreed to replace their leader in the hope of improving chances against the Liberals in the next election.
“I believe politics is about purpose not about personality,” Gillard told a TV interview ahead of the leadership poll, and pledged to stand down as an MP if she lost the vote. After losing the vote, she duly announced her decision to stand down as a Labor candidate in the next election and told a press conference in Canberra: “I respect that, and I respect the decision they made,’’ referring to the 57 colleagues who voted against her.
Following her lead, Wayne Swan, who resigned from the post of treasurer and deputy prime minister said in his press conference: “They say experience can either make you bitter or better - I choose the latter,” adding
"I hope I've learned from this experience and that it will shine on the better angels in my nature." Kevin Rudd, in turn after winning the leadership battle praised both Gillard and Swan for their services to the Labor Party and Australia without any reservation.
The whole logic behind this reshuffle was based on opinion polls, which indicated the Labor Party needs to perform much better to have any chance against the Liberal party in the next election. Some commentators here have termed the recent history of successively changing leaders as a "structural problem" due to the Labor party vesting this power entirely in the hands of its current 103 MPs, whereas others have simply referred to this process as a "coup."
However, in my view, this is a valuable example of party leadership being underpinned by a mechanism of performance evaluation that allows colleagues to scrutinise their leader's performance internally. The reaction of Labor leaders after the caucus election further underscores that they understand a key indicator of successful leadership is performance and outcomes, not their personality.
I believe this is a template that should be applied by Bangladeshi political parties where the logic of democratic politics is, at the moment, overridden by personality cults. My justification for applying the Australian template in Bangladesh is boosted by the fact that Australians are way ahead of Bangladesh and most of the world, in every socio-economic indicator one can think of. I believe Australian politicians have played a pivotal role behind the impressive development of their country. Therefore, as the Australian model of politics can be seen as a functional one that has worked for the betterment of the society, Bangladesh's dysfunctional democracy could benefit from adopting this template for its politics.
However, our political parties including BNP, Awami League, Jatiya Party do not come close to employing performance evaluation style scrutiny for their leadership. Yet, this is a key indicator for making a political party democratic, and accountable. Performance evaluation of party leadership further provides a process, through which a spill-over effect can make the country, and its key institutions as a whole, more accountable and democratic.
Instead of this though, our parties are running on a framework where political leaders are elevated to a saint-like position. Internally, within our party structures, the scope for performance evaluation of our leadership is nil. As a result, within our political parties, we neither see a process for developing new leadership, nor do we see leaders challenged about their capacity to lead their party or our country. Without professionalism in democratic politics, the true values of democracy are lost in Bangladesh.
However, this situation is not a viable or sustainable option for us because Bangladesh, like other developing countries, faces numerous challenges from globalisation.
Our political parties must realise that democracy requires competitive politics and introduce some sort of performance evaluation mechanisms for leadership within their own parties.
Otherwise, our national leadership will continue to fall far behind global standards. Qualitative change in politics must come from the very top and objective evaluations of leadership performance must be allowed to override personality and position. For inspiration we can take Australia as an example.
