Thoughts on leadership

Maybe the problem isn't so much with our political leadership as we so fondly believe but in us as a nation. Maybe, instead of blaming our political leaders for all our miseries, we should look in the mirror and come clean as to our own complicity in the unsatisfactory state of our nation's politics.

We all know what we would want in our elected leaders. We all know what the problems of governance in Bangladesh are. Our aspirations and ambitions are not so very different and if you were to ask a cross-section of the population what needs to be fixed in the country, you would see a fair amount of unanimity of opinion.

Different people may have their different pet issues and might choose to emphasize some issues more and others less, but by and large, people want the same thing both for themselves and for the country.

We would like to see corruption curtailed. We would like to see law and order prevail. We would like a functioning system of justice. We would like better infrastructure. In short, we would like the government to provide us with the kind of services that we have been led to believe government should be in the business of providing.

Notice that the above -- and it's a very short list which can be expanded almost at will -- cuts across ideological boundaries. There are other issues upon which people of good conscience can and do disagree fiercely -- whether to export gas to India, how to or indeed whether to privatise nationalised industries, how to or indeed whether to deregulate the economy, what should our relationship with India be like, what percentage of the budget should be devoted to development etc.

Again, this list can be expanded indefinitely and I am not suggesting that there is some kind of political consensus in the country on all issues of economics and politics.

But we all pay lip service to the former list. Where is the public official or private citizen who will boldly proclaim that he is actually in favour of corruption or bad roads or unsafe water or intermittent electricity? So there is a fair deal of consensus -- enough for what should at the very least be a working consensus.

The point I am trying to make here is that if we believe all these things then why do we continue to elect representatives who resolutely fail to deliver on matters that are of important to us. And I don't want to hear that it is the fault of this party or that party. Again, we can disagree on which party is more corrupt and which provides government services more efficiently etc. But no one can argue with a straight face that either party has much of a record to be proud of.

The fact of the matter is that we do have the power to change things. It is within our capability. We talk about the need for new political leadership, but the fact remains that we do have leaders who might be able to deliver for us better than our existing leadership -- we just don't tend to vote for them.

Political leaders do not arise in a vacuum. There is a context for everything. Perhaps the quality of Bangladesh's elected leadership tells us more about us than it does about them.

Zafar Sobhan is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.