Democracy and parliament

Parliament: The seat of democracy

Free and fair election is a precondition for formation of a democratic government as without that the government would fail to be government by the people. There must be an effective system for ensuring accountability of the government for all its activities to the people or else it would fail to meet the criteria of government for the people.

When democracy is practiced with parliament as the most important institution it is termed as parliamentary democracy. In a parliamentary system of governance parliament assumes the role of focal point of all state activities. Government is formed in the parliament and the actions of the government are decided in the parliament. Under the system, parliament also functions as the institution responsible for ensuring accountability of the government to the people and thus puts the government on track to perform as per desire of the people.

The role and function of parliament in respect of formation and operation of government as envisaged by persons who drafted our constitution are as follows:

Article 56(3) of the constitution says: "The President shall appoint as Prime Minister the member of Parliament who appears to him to command the support of the majority of the members of Parliament."

Article 55(1) says: "There shall be a cabinet for Bangladesh having the Prime Minister at its head and comprising also such other Ministers as the Prime Minister may from time to time designate.

(2) The executive power of the Republic shall, in accordance with this Constitution, be exercised by or on the authority of the Prime Minister."

Chief executive of the country, the Prime Minister is a member of parliament. The constitution makes it mandatory for the PM to select at least 90 per cent of member of cabinet from amongst the MPs as per Article 56(2). PM along with the cabinet members forms the government.

Article 65(1) of the constitution stipulates: "There shall be a Parliament for Bangladesh (to be known as House of the Nation) in which subject to the provisions of this Constitution, shall be vested the legislative powers of the Republic."

One of the main functions of parliament is law making. What are the laws? They are in fact road maps to be followed by the government to achieve a desired society. Laws act as guidelines to be adhered to by the executives of the government in running its different functions. Change of law or amendment of law provides scope for modification of the existing guide line or road map.

Article55. (3), Bangladesh Constitution stipulates: "The Cabinet shall be collectively responsible to Parliament."

As per the said article, parliament has been bestowed with another important function that is to ensure accountability of the government.

Besides the members of the cabinet, all other members of parliament including the members of treasury bench and of opposition camp collectively comprise parliament. It has already been mentioned that the responsibility of making the government accountable lies with parliament. Thus it is not that, the responsibility of asking for and ensuring accountability of the government lies with the MPs belonging to opposition parties only. MPs belonging to the government parties (who are not government ministers) are also equally responsible for demanding and ensuring accountability of the government for all its activities through the Parliament.

Article: 76. (1) states: "Parliament shall appointment from among its members the following standing committees."

This provision provides scope for formation of parliamentary standing committees for carrying out oversight function of the parliament over different government functionaries. This article of the constitution has provided the parliament a very strong tool to supervise the day to day activities of the government and find out irregularities in order to redress the same.

The above shows the intention of architects of our constitution in relation to functioning of parliament. These were found to be pious hopes in real life practice.

There is a provision in the constitution article 70(1), which says: "A person elected as a member of Parliament at an election at which he was nominated as a candidate by a political party shall vacate his seat if he resigns from the party or votes in Parliament against that party."

This provision of the constitution discourages to the extent which may be termed as prohibits the MPs to take a stand against their party line in parliament. In other words, this restriction on MPs enables the government to have the captive support of the majority number of government party MPs for all its activities.

As such, the major function of parliament, that is making law, has become a mere formality. Government drafts laws as per their own choice. Laws are passed in the parliament exactly as desired by the government with the help of the majority number of government party MPs who are not allowed to differ for the restriction as mentioned earlier. So, for the purpose of law making or for any other matter role of the parliament has been reduced to nothing but a rubber stamp of legality for all governmental activities. The parliament has no strength to deny approval or to modify any of the government proposals without government agreeing to it.

Parliament's role to make the cabinet responsible to it has also become dysfunctional for a similar reason. Due to the said provision, government party MPs cannot criticize the cabinet and are to support its actions irrespective of the merit or their personal view to be otherwise. Parliament with majority number of members (belonging to government party) not in its side becomes too weak to pose effective challenge to government.

Parliamentary standing committees being designed to be functioning as mini-parliament have the proportional representation of members on party basis as per the parliament. Besides, the government has the option to decide on selection of chairperson for the committees. As such, the committees have majority numbers from government party and the chairpersons are also mostly chosen from the government party. With that composition and with the constitutional restrictions on the members, the committees are not allowed (by the government) to become cause of government's embarrassment by finding out fault or irregularities in their activities.

It may be seen that parliament with parliamentary standing committees are dysfunctional. They are not in position to effectively perform the functions expected of them .and assigned to them as per constitution. They fail to effectively check the government in exercising authority in an autocratic way.

Under the circumstance, government has become sole decision maker in the affairs of the state without any hindrance. PM's secretariat as the seat of government has assumed all authority and has become the most important institution in running the affairs of state. The PMO not only takes decision on running of government, they also decide on the outcome of parliament. In our existing system of governance, parliament is not the most important institution and is not considered as the focal point of all the affairs of state.

The PM's secretariat may be considered to be most important and be the centre of all governmental activities. As such, our system of governance may not be termed parliamentary system but a prime ministerial system where the institution of prime minister commands almost limitless power and decision making authority.

It is evident as explained above that the present system cannot persuade the government to act as per the hopes and aspirations of the people, neither can it ensure accountability of the government. Without any reflection of the desire of the people in its actions, and without accountability, can the government be run democratically?

An important criterion of having a democratic government as already mentioned earlier is conduct of the election in a free and fair way under a neutral environment. But in reality, use of black money and muscle power is on the rise in the election in order to manipulate the result. The reason being lack of control of the administration and election commission in maintaining law and order due to its inefficiency, partisan bias and corruption and also lapses in the existing election rules.

Moreover, the party in power uses all possible means to influence the election results in their side using public money and governmental authority. This is reducing the possibility of a free and fair election. The chance of having a free and fair election in which the true wishes of the people would be reflected are becoming more and more remote with the passage of time.

In the absence of a free and fair election, can the government formed on that be considered a democratic government?

GM Quader is an MP