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East-West
Interim government vs. democratic government
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
By Dr. A.K. Enamul Haque Ph.D.
As the US Vice President Dick Cheney visits Baghdad this past week, Iraqis have seen another series of attacks. The most important of them were the ones in Baghdad’s green zone and the other one the so-called safe Kurdish zone. Amidst this, the new US Congress has just passed a new bill introducing two monthly installments of budgets for their troops in Iraq. Clearly, things are not right in Baghdad. It was not supposed be like this. The situation was supposed to have been improved after the changes within the security systems.
President Bush is clearly not happy on both fronts. He expected the insurgency to be reduced after they had implemented the new security plan (what they had boasted in public when in its initial week the number of attacks went down). He at the same time expected the Congress to pass his budget "for the sake of US troops" in Iraq. It did not happen in this way. Congress did not want to give him a blank cheque anymore. They had said that they are under voter’s pressure to act in this way. However, all of these events took place without killing a single person in the streets of Washington DC.
With this I am not going to start a new debate on the merit or demerit of the Iraq war. My problem is to understand the human mind – particularly the mind of the leaders. Accepting defeat does not mean humiliation in the western world. As such, when a leader is defeated or when a bill is passed against his will, he/she takes it as a political toy and plays with it both legally and also politically. Opposition is there to point out the shortcomings and ills of the government so that they can win in the next round.
Elected leaders are also expected to stay in touch with their voters (transparency) and should remain answerable to them. It is therefore suggested that transparency and accountability are the main features of democratic government.
Since the 9/11 incident, the US Government has been telling story after story to dig to the root. After 6 years nobody still knows the truth. Millions of dollars have been spent to hunt down Osama with no apparent or strategic success. Osama remains at large while nearly half a million have been killed during the conflicts following 9/11.
In the UK, Prime Minister Tony Blair has just announced his intention to resign from the post of the PM from June 27, 2007. He has been the PM of the UK for the last 10 years and he is only 54 years of age. Today (May 10, 2007) he has decided to resign from his post. In his speech he has acknowledged some of his drawbacks during his tenure, he has also said that "expectations were too high" when he came into power and he has "fallen short of" achieving some of the goals. It was a very clear statement from a statesman. Can we expect this same from others like our PM or Ex-PM or the sitting Chief Advisor of the Care Taker government? The answer is no. It would be difficult to say this in the way Mr. Blair did it today. Why? I would say – social stigma. Consequently we cannot expect the same democratic behavior or tolerance from the leaders of Bangladesh.
Many times, I asked myself can our PM ask his colleagues in the cabinet to resign from his/her post because of his/her failure? The answer is "almost impossible". It has happened in Bangladesh during Begum Zia’s regime but it was not very pleasant. Why? In our social settings, a sacked minister is seen as the fall guy, so he is not likely to be re-elected as an MP after being sacked (there were few exceptions too). So no PM wants to take the risk of losing a seat in the Parliament by sacking a member of his/her cabinet (no matter how inefficient or corrupt he is). Similarly, unlike western lawmakers, our MPs are not expected to be lawmakers. They are expected to deliver goods and services to the local people (because local governments like Provincial Governments, City Governments etc. do not exist in practice). Poor people in the constituency expect an MP to lobby for roads, schools, hospitals, and electricity connections for his/her area. They also expect him to become an administrator of such supplies. Consequently, these MPs get involved in corruption, few of them consider attending the Parliament to make laws or participate in the debates. Their main task is to secure money from the government departments for their own area.
Such attitudes weaken the Parliament. MPs do not consider joining the session nor do they want to debate on issues of their interest. They come to the Parliament to second opinions of their leaders only. Moreover, because they are not much interested in changing laws (to change the society) they are not bothered much if they fail to join the sessions.
Under these circumstances, democratic institutions like Parliament cannot deliver the goods people expect of them. Members end up quarreling among them on sharing the booties. At the end the best form of governances is to form the so called "unity government". From the outset, it looks like a broad alliance of forces acting together to achieve a short-term goal but in practice it is a government to "distribute" corruption. Moreover, in the long run, such governments will weaken the democratic institutions and will bring in social unrest or are likely to invite an autocratic form of government.
Since most of the democracies in the developing world are still not founded well with built-in systems and institutions to guarantee transparency and accountability, I cannot trust any unity government in these countries. Whether such governments come in to Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Pakistan or Bangladesh my humble opinion remains the same.
I do hope people in the west understand the differences in the current practices of democracies and so they should also be tolerate some degree of impurity in the practices of democracy in these parts of the world, however, they should always ensure that voice of the people are there.
I am worried when western democracies support governments around the world who are running the show without opposition or when they oppose a duly elected government just because they [the west] are not liked by them [example, Iran, Hamas] or when they install governments in the name of "unity government" [Iraq], "interim government" [Palestine] etc. in the name of establishing an accountable form of government.
Let us make it clear – interim government, unity government, caretaker government, etc. are not democratic government.
Impurity in Government: Something the West Takes For Granted.
By Philip Shaw M.Sc.
It is something I used to take almost for granted. As a child I used to watch CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite telling the nightly story about Vietnam. It was a horrendous story, lighting up our black and white TV every night. Making sense of it for a child was almost impossible. However, at the end of the day Cronkite related that the South Vietnam government was in the fight too.
That's ancient history now, but it's something I grew up believing. That was that the Americans were over there fighting communism and eventually when the dust cleared the South Vietnam government would govern South Vietnam. It sounded reasonable at the time to these young western ears. The only problem was, the South Vietnamese government redefined corrupt. To enlightened eyes at the time, it was a road to nowhere.
Fast forward 30 years and we look at Iraq. Have we learned anything? Keep in mind many of the old rules in the west post 911 don't apply anymore. Typically, post 911 many of them were shunted aside. Iraq is not Afghanistan. Afghanistan was directly related to 911. However, filtering it through the 911 lens many similarities exist. It would seem the west after all these years is still trying to put democracy into a Petri dish on a laboratory table. Just because it grows here, doesn't necessarily mean it'll grow the same far from western shores.
I didn't really get this until I traveled abroad. Living in rural Canada is akin to living in a kind of heaven. Oh yes, it can get cold but for the most part I work in isolation with very few people around me per square kilometer. On leaving Canada I've been able visit countries with less stable political institutions, which invariably creates much instability among the populous on the ground.
Case in point was the last time I was in Bangladesh in 2003. When I arrived at Zia airport soldiers greeted me with rifles at almost every corner. I had known that the Bangladeshi government had enacted a new "law and order" regime so it wasn't much of a surprise. However, it was a lot different than I had experienced before and of course much different than Canada.
Some might say that's a bit like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. However, it was the correct strategy at the time for the Bangladeshi government of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia. As Enamul says, provincial and city governments don't really exist. The police forces are corrupt. So sometimes swatting a fly with a sledgehammer is the only option. Ditto for a little bit of "impurity within democracy." Westerners should judge democracy differently in the developing world. Doing the best with democracy without many legal and political institutions the west takes for granted can be daunting.
So how do we get there? That's the tough one. In many ways it's like building a new house with matchsticks, one matchstick at a time. It seemingly takes forever. Afghanistan is a good example of that at the present time. Torn by war for seemingly the last 30 years, what does the "ordinary Joe" Afghani expect from a "democratic government"? It's almost laughable to think about. He or she only knows what she knows which isn't much about democracy over the last 25 years. Meanwhile back in Ottawa, Paris, Washington and other western capitals, western citizens wonder about progress with their troops on the ground in Afghanistan. It is almost like a "clash of cultures" caught between differing institutional realities on the ground.
Of course is the cup half full or half empty? That's the proverbial question on how things look differently depending on where you are at. For western eyes the cup is half full when we have an interim, unity or caretaker government. That might seem a bit paternalistic but it is what it is. Starting with one matchstick in western eyes is better than anarchy on the ground. Yes, that ideal surely gets clouded when you consider Iraq, Afghanistan, the Congo and other places. Giving people hope, liberty, food, education and a way ahead are of vital importance.
Does this mean democracy sometimes has to take a back seat to more immediate needs? It would seem so. However, true democracy is a work in progress. Every nation was there once a long time ago. It is exceedingly difficult in developing countries to "jump 100 years". So the key lies with the western world. Like Enamul says, interim, unity, caretaker government are what they are. However, they are not democratic. That ideal is the prize. Getting close to it even with a few blemishes in the mix sometimes has to do. With time it will all even out.
East/West is a joint column written by A.K. Enamul Haque and Philip Shaw. Dr. A.K.Enamul Haque Ph.D, is a Professor of Economics at United International University. Philip Shaw M.Sc. is farmer, writer and broadcaster in Dresden, Ontario, Canada. Each month they will bring their uniquely East/West perspectives to specific topics of world interest.
