Seats in JS

I was very surprised at the feedback of Mr. Mannan Bhuiyan, Secretary General of the BNP, aired by BBC on Jan 14. He reasoned that they had no plan to increase the number from 300 to 500 due to space scarcity in our Sangsad building. It sounded rather strange indeed. Enhancement of parliamentary seats will depend on state infrastructure , not on rooms in the parliament building. Our population and assets do not support such steps. It will be a further drain on the state coffer.

The government has not yet crossed the Rubicon and so the scheme should be undone for the welfare of the nation as a whole.

More MPs for better governance?

Mahmud I Hasan, New York, USA

Recently, the ruling coalition in Bangladesh has raised the issue of a larger parliament to deal with better representation for a burgeoning population. But the rationale that larger population equates to a greater need for a larger parliament is not clear, to say the least.

Today the US population stands at about 300 million , compared to the 140 million in Bangladesh. In the US, there are only 435 members in the Lower House, the House of Representatives. If Bangladesh wants to have a larger parliament, then instead of creating a larger general chamber, it should consider creating an upper house, the terms for whose members should not run parallel to the lower house and their constituencies should be different from those of MPs ( Britain also follows a similar model). Maybe, the solution lies in creating a hundred-member upper house, each of whom would be elected from three parliamentary seats. This would strike a balance and create an environment of compromise in parliament, as it would have the opposition parties serving a greater role in governance. It would force bickering politicians into Handshakes. (Please ask them to read the "Federalist Papers" of the writings of Thomas Jefferson)

If their motives are to satisfy all of their leaders and pseudo-leaders by giving them a taste of power, then they should consider federalising the government and creating states and state governments. This way more and more conflicting interests will bring about more transparency. It might even ensure more co-operation from opposition parties as even if they do not hold federal power they might end up running a few state governments and by forcing them to have a stake in the government, it might be possible to banish the hartal-culture. Moreover, it would bring the government closer to people, and that is always welcome.

In the current political landscape, it is easily conceivable that the BNP is holding federal power and the Awami League running the state governments in Sylhet, Khulna, and Mymensingh.

This possible scenario would lessen the frictions among the politicos or at the least create the mechanisms to grease the wheels to lessen the frictions. Another question that has been considered is the reserved seats for women. How it is possible that this has not been challenged in court as a violation of the constitution of Bangladesh as it discriminates against men on the basis of gender. Instead of holding reserved seats for women, the political parties should try to groom more female leaders and field them as regular candidates for parliamentary seats.

I hope someone is going to read all of this and try to take the pulse of the nation before burdening the poor country with an annual expenditure of another one to two hundred crore taka.