Bangladesh’s two major parties -- Bangladesh Awami League (AL) and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) are founded on the principles of democracy.
For example, AL, in its manifesto, argues that it is founded upon four key principles: Democracy, secularism, socialism, and Bengali nationalism. In relation to upholding democracy, the party, in one of its manifestos published in 2009, asserts that it aims to develop a democratic system reflecting the spirit of section 11 of the Bangladeshi Constitution. In order to establish such a system, AL claims that:
a. It will make sure freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of movement, and freedom of religion for all citizens are ensured.
b. It will ensure media freedom.
c. It will protect universal human rights for every citizen and defend against any attempt to violate human rights.
d. It will take action against corruption.
e. It will keep working to establish good governance.
f. It will keep parliament at the heart of any AL government’s structure.
g. It will establish gender equality, ensure women’s empowerment, and increase women’s participation at policy level.
In contrast, BNP, in its latest manifesto, argues that belief in Islam, Bangladeshi nationalism, democracy, and capitalism are its four key principles.
In terms of democracy, BNP states that “a healthy environment for democracy could only be established through parliamentary democracy” and it “acknowledges that a free market economy is essential for establishing democracy.”
What appears is that both parties operate with a mindset, at least in theory, that they will promote liberal market principles with democracy. Both parties support theories of democratisation on paper.
A key premise of the democratisation theory is that global trade is expected to create free markets, which would facilitate the creation of citizenship, a middle class, and a civil society in the developing world.
The market would then act to limit state excess by creating rationales for individual economic freedom, legal equality, and judicial independence, thereby encouraging more social demands and democratic processes.
Democracy, within this paradigm, indicates both an institutional process and a way of living where a political system would ensure citizen rights, competitive elections, representative institutions, an accountable government, an active civil society, and a religiously neutral state.
However, we know that Bangladesh is not the best example of upholding democratic values and principles. Evidence suggests that all major indicators for measuring a liberal-styled political context -- including electoral competitiveness, democratic quality, press freedom, religious freedom, civil liberties, and the rule of law -- indicate that “the country remains stubbornly beset by democratic deficiencies.”
In 2014, Professor Ali Riaz reached such a conclusion about Bangladesh following an analysis on various acceptable surveys and indices to measure the democratic quality of a country, including Polity IV database, the index of democracy of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI), World Value Survey (WVS), the press freedom index of Reporters Without Borders, Freedom House survey, and US State Department reports.
So why is it that there exists a disconnection between theory and practice in the implication of Bangladeshi politics? One possible source is the lack of internal democracy within political parties.
What appears is that both parties operate with a mindset, at least in theory, that they will promote liberal market principles with democracy. Both parties support theories of democratisation on paper
Even though, through party manifesto, both AL and BNP campaigns, for a democratic Bangladesh, Professor Rounaq Jahan, in her book Political Parties in Bangladesh: Challenges of Democratisation, identified that lack of internal democracy has been a persistent problem for these parties.
Lack of internal democracy means that the decision-making process and vital party policies are not framed through a bottom-up approach. Furthermore, leadership of front organisations of both parties are mostly hand-picked in lieu of putting the leaders of front organisations through a competitive process.
A similar approach is applied in terms of choosing the top leadership. There is an unwritten rule that immediate family members of both parties will avail of top leadership positions. However, this is not unique in Bangladesh as we have seen in the case of Congress in India.
Nevertheless, for a democratic system to flourish at its fullest potential, it is important that a greater mechanism of checks and balances are in place in selecting the party leadership and overseeing party operations.
However, both leaders of BNP and AL are immensely powerful. They have written and unwritten mandates in running their parties, including selecting/hand-picking key committees of the party and front organisations such as Chhatra League and Chhatra Dal.
Even though some of those leaders and party committee members are selected through an internal election, it is a well known fact that those who will not contest in internal elections would not get nods from high-ups.
The extent of power of party leaderships is not only run in maintaining an iron fist over the internal party affairs, but it is a well known fact that many key decisions of the parties regarding external affairs are taken with little or no accountability.
It’s the leaders who matter the most among everyone else in the party, in regard to party affairs at least. Such a mind-set is further reflected through the nature of regimes and governments.
To explain this particular pattern of leadership, political scientists Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb coined the term “presidentialisation.”
According to Poguntke and Webb: “Presidentialisation denotes a process by which regimes are becoming more presidential in their actual practice without, in most cases, changing their regime type.
In other words, presidentialisation is the idea that leaders have more resources and autonomy within the institutional parameters of their regime than their predecessors.”
Therefore, there is a chance that the nature of the leadership of party and the government would be presidentialised even though those parties in their manifesto, like in the case of AL and BNP, position themselves as democratic.
This is not unique to Bangladeshi parties’ leadership, as Glenn Kefford, in his book All Hail the Leaders: The Australian Labour Party and Political Leadership explains how the leadership of the ALP was presidentialised.
Dr Mubashar Hasan, PhD is an expert of Bangladeshi politics who teaches political science in a Bangladeshi university. He is also the founder of www.alochonaa.com, a non-partisan online platform to foster dialogue among cultures and civilisations.
