Undemocratic norms

In the electoral process, one person can compete from five constituencies. A member of the parliament represents only one constituency and therefore when a person is elected from all five constituencies, s/he only holds one constituency and re-election is held in other four constituencies. It is incongruent with the notion of democracy because every member of the parliament has equal status as far as election is concerned and a member, who cannot represent all the five constituencies but is elected from those constituencies, can claim supremacy which is undemocratic and it only helps to form government. Nothing good for the nation is done and personal charisma prevails over gross collective interest. It is both unethical and undemocratic.

An astronomical amount of money is spent for election and therefore the re-election process should be avoided. Playing an 'election game' with the money of the poor people of this land is also unethical and undemocratic.

Abraham Lincoln defined democracy as a process of the people, by the people and for the people. This existing process tends to change the definition to something like: of the personal image, by the personal image and for the personal image. Moreover, the form of democracy in all the democratic countries is not alike. We want a truly Bangladeshi democracy.

In our parliament, a legislator cannot vote against his party's decision over any issue even if it is detrimental to the welfare of the people of his constituency. This is by no way 'democracy', rather it is democratically chosen 'patriarchy'.

I hope the policy makers will ponder over these issues and give us, the people of Bangladesh, a truly ethical, welfare oriented democracy in near future.