Negotiating strategies for reforms

"Time is running out fast ... a consensus must be reached quickly and it must be reached with us," PM Khaleda Zia cautioned in her speech concluding the 23rd session of Parliament on October 4. The BNP leadership knew all along that they had no option but to sit together with the AL leadership. The wait for the negotiations until two weeks before transferring power to the CTG appears questionable.

Speculation runs strong that US Ambassador Patricia A Butenis may have already negotiated a possible compromise of "give and take" with Hasina and Khaleda. One also wonders why both leaders are packing their luggage for overseas trips at this crucial juncture.

To pursue a "give and take" strategy for a resolution of the impasse, one may make a cursory review of the following 9 out of 31 reform proposals (abridged from DS, October 5) placed by the opposition:

1. The chief adviser and advisers to the CTG be appointed by the president in consultation with all political parties. They must be politically neutral.

2. The EC to be formed in consultation with (major) political parties and made independent of the executive branch.

3. Computerized voter lists and voter identity cards be introduced along with electronic voting machines.

4. Use of transparent ballot boxes with serial numbers.

5. The Ministry of Defense be placed under the CTG during its tenure.

6. Making disclosure of candidates' wealth and sources.

7. If candidates or their family members are identified as loan defaulters or black money possessors they be made ineligible to run for election.

8. Candidates with criminal record are barred from election.

9. Banning exploitation of religion and fundamentalist campaign for election purposes.

My premonition: if the opposition soften their demand for candidates' ineligibility based on loan defaults, black money possession, corruption and criminal records, all other reforms proposals, including the consensus driven compositions of the EC and CTG advisers including its chief, will be greeted by the ruling cartel. The reasons are several:

• If candidates are sorted out using those criteria, BNP may not have enough competent and honest candidates left to run for all seats;
• What can a consensus-selected EC, or a politically neutral CTG, do, given that the election conducting machinery, the senior law enforcing officers, and district and upazilla level election officers are mostly already BNP-ised.
• With JP joining the ruling cartel, BNP's odds of winning a majority of seats once again seems reassuring (at least the BNP leadership thinks so).

The 15th amendment to the constitution, which had extended the retirement age of Supreme Court judges, essentially ignited the demand for CTG and EC reforms. KM Hasan, who suffers from countrywide disrepute outside the BNP circle, is a recognized BNP partisan. How could the BNP leadership insist on making him the CTG chief given that the choice of a non-neutral and partisan individual for the job would be contrary to a provision of the constitutional?

The country would have applauded had KM Hasan displayed the decency expected of a former chief justice by refusing to take up the controversial post of chief adviser to the CTG. He does not seem to be such decent a person in my book, similar to another former justice, the much disparaged chairman of the EC, MA Aziz.

Considering the significance of the outcome of the negotiations, one may look into some recent negotiating stratagems.

Recent negotiating literature (Heidi Burgess, "Negotiation Strategies," January 2004) predominantly focuses on two strategies: interest-based (or integrative, or cooperative) bargaining, and positional (or distributive or competitive) bargaining. In their best-selling book, "Getting to Yes," Roger Fisher and William Ury advanced three approaches, namely, hard, soft, and what they call "principled negotiation."

• Hard is essentially extremely competitive bargaining;
• Soft entails extremely integrative bargaining (so integrative that one gives up one's own interests in the hopes of meeting the other person's interests);
• Principled negotiation is supposed to be somewhere in between, but closer to soft, certainly, than hard.

Lax and Sebenius believe that all negotiations were blends of both, integrative and distributive, approaches. Negotiators first try to "create value" by making the "pie" as big as they can. This approach is promoted by interest-based and principled negotiation. But, inexorably, the second step necessitates that the pie will be split up, calling for distributive negotiation. So they claim that all negotiation is a combination of creating and claiming value, not one or the other as other theorists suggest.

In game theory context there are three well known terms: win-win, win-lose, and lose-lose that refer to the possible outcomes of a game or dispute involving two parties, and more importantly, how each party perceives its outcome relative to their standing before the game or negotiation.

Win-win outcome occurs when each side of a dispute feels that it has won. This outcome is achieved through a process of integrative bargaining.

Win-lose situations are a distributive bargaining process which result when only one side perceives the outcome as positive. Thus, win-lose outcomes are less likely to be accepted voluntarily.

Lose-lose outcome results when both parties end up being worse off. Paradoxically, lose-lose outcomes can be preferable to win-lose outcomes because the distribution is at least considered to be fair.

Keep in mind that any negotiation may be reframed so that expectations are lowered. Thus, with lowered expectations, it may be possible for negotiators to craft win-win solutions out of a potentially hopeless lose-lose outcome. However, this requires that the parties sacrifice their original demands for lesser ones.

Spotlighting the on-going AL-BNP negotiating strategies, any reform proposal BNP accedes to may be looked upon by BNP loyalists as a win-lose outcome in favour of AL. On the other hand, anything less than what the AL struggled for, and endured all those police brutalities for, may be looked upon as win-lose situation in favour of BNP. In fact, acceding to all feasible reform proposals may be considered a win-win situation for both parties. Since BNP is so confident of winning in a free and fair election, wheedling and cajoling AL to participate in the election will, in itself, be a victory for BNP.

For the opposition, the first four proposals are crucial for a relatively free and fair election. Negotiation on these is not an option in this highly BNP-ised electoral machinery. However, compromising on candidates' credentials relating to loan defaults, black money possession, and criminal records should be consummated as a trade off for the crucial ones.

Many political analysts fear, and rightly so, that if the reform issues are not amicably resolved during the tenure of the ruling cartel, violent country-wide confrontations are inevitable as Hasina has already called upon the people to converge on the capital from all directions on the day KM Hasan takes over as the chief of the CTG. This is the ultimate lose-lose outcome not only for both parties, but for the country and the people at large.

Dr Abdullah A. Dewan is Professor of Economics at Eastern Michigan University.