The New Nation - Internet Edition

Sayed Kamaluddin

Amid lingering suspicion amongst the people of all hue whether the polls would actually take place, the two mainstream political parties - the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) - finally announced their election manifestos on 12 and 13 December respectively, for the 29 December parliamentary polls. The manifestos say what the two largest parties have to offer to the people if they win the election and form the government. This is a routine job that the political parties undertake rather ritualistically on the eve of every national election and tend to forget once the polls are over. Apparently there is no exception this year either. However, it is too early to hazard a guess if the manifesto of the winning party - should there be any clear winner in this election, one may add - would meet the same fate this time, but one never knows.

This comes to one's mind readily because the roots of innumerable problems that the country and the government face today could arguably be found in the issues concerned with good governance and devolution of power to the local government.

And the two parties that had alternately formed government three times since 1991 have managed not to mention this issue in their manifestos in specific terms and therefore, one assumes, they are not much bothered about this.

For example, the Awami League President Sheikh Hasina announced her party's election manifesto styled as 'Vision 2021' aimed at the younger voters describing her party's vision for country's development by the year 2021 when Bangladesh becomes 50. The planners did a reasonably good job in focusing how the nation's problems would be tackled and promised a brighter future for the country and the people.

However, they have not been able to convincingly provide enough details on how to realize such goals and where the resources for such development projects would come from. Likewise, the BNP has also promised to remove poverty through job creation and economic growth. While their manifestos offer somewhat different stance towards the country's development but they are almost identical in rhetorical terms.

Be that as it may, the focus of this article, in brief, is the decentralisation of administration, which the leaders of the two top political parties have repeatedly promised but failed to do anything to implement the same. In fact, they have even failed to formalise their policy decision whether or not to hold the local level elections during their 15-year rule.

This does not seem to bode well for the future of the empowerment of the local administration. It does not need much explanation to bring home the truth that without the empowerment of the local bodies government institutions the Dhaka-based government cannot effectively ensure the service delivery system to implement its policy decisions. It has failed time and again in the past because of this deficiency and is likely to do so again unless this weakness is rectified.

Apparently, the caretaker government (CG), which came to power in January 2007, has decided to hold the local bodies elections soon after the parliamentary polls because it does not have faith in the next elected political government to hold the local bodies election on time. Obviously, the political parties - especially the top two parties - were vehemently opposed to the CG's holding of the local level elections and said that it should be left to them.

The caretaker government, however, did not listen to the political leaders' demand and stayed on course. While it makes sense that the decision to hold local level elections should be left to the popularly elected political government but given the political parties' lukewarm stance towards the nourishment of the local government institutions in the past, the decision should be considered a positive one.

How the next political government treats the newly elected local government bodies for making them effective medium of service delivery system would reflect its commitment towards power decentralisation and institution development in the rural areas.

Why the mainstream political parties have not come out clean on this vital issue even after what they have experienced following the changeover in early 2007 is not quite understandable. Of course, there are vitally related issue that include unhealthy political rivalry at all levels and lack of trust between the country's two major political parties (read leaders) and absence of intra and inter-party democracy that tend to create major weaknesses in governance remained unresolved. As a result, attempts to develop parliament and political parties' as institutions have not succeeded and became the embodiment of bad governance. Political leaders of all hues routinely came up with all sorts of suggestions to remedy the ills but never took the trouble of initiating any process to reach a consensus on any contentious political issue. Till today they have not been able to reach a consensus on any of the national issues that keep fueling political contention. Apparently they are not concerned at all so long as their 'political supremacy' is not disturbed, notwithstanding the experience they gained in the last two years.

As mentioned, successive governments in the past decades kept paying lip services to issues involving governance and decentralisation of local elective bodies but had hardly ever followed them up in fulfillment of their promises. Unless institutions are developed, making them responsible and accountable for service delivery at the local levels to meet the needs of the people, it becomes extremely difficult for a centralised administration to do so. Without a responsive and accountable body available to administer service at the grassroots level on behalf of the central government the problems remain unattended. Simply put, this is how and why the governance becomes ineffective and peoples' sufferings multiply. Unhealthy political rivalries and well-nurtured, deeply embedded system of crony culture further aggravate it making the government of the day unpopular. One only hopes that the shock therapy administered in the form of 1/11 changeover may have some salutary effect on the psyche of the people and their leaders.

(The writer is editor, weekly Holiday)