What will elections bring?

Will elections bring down the endemic corruption, or nepotism or favouritism in government offices? Can elections do anything to improve the law and order situation, or stop extra-judicial killings? Will power generation and distribution improve? Will teachers and labourers get a better deal? Will people get some relief from the sky-rocketing prices of essentials?

How rich does one have to be to seek public office? Can people themselves bear the cost of electioneering or do they have to again vote for rich migrant politicians, being offered little choice? Is it going to be a free, fair, and transparent election?

This host of questions is agitating the public mind.

How can the most corrupt country in the world have a free, fair, and transparent election? When the corruption in the political arena is increasing at an alarming rate, even after becoming world champion, the politicians still claim that people are very much enthusiastic.

Personally, my interest in voting has dwindled a great deal since the last time, for I do not want to be a party to the country's most corrupt in the world status. Where are the honest faces, or new mechanisms that can generate some measure of hope?

If there is tons of black money rolling, it will be out to buy the election. Regarding the Anti-Corruption Commission, a Dhaka University professor told me: "We have everything in our hospitals except the doctor and the medicine."

Bangladesh has all kinds of commissions and ombudsman along with most corrupt in the world status. Paper commissions are at least better than the real ones, as paper ones do not waste taxpayer money.

Officially, a candidate cannot spend more than Tk 600,000. On the ground, this is a joke. Election expenditure varies between Tk 20 million and 200 million -- affordable only to the ultra rich few. Money and muscle are, mostly, the deciding factors in national elections.

Who has a minimum of twenty million and willingness to spend to become an MP for the next five years? That is a minimum of pro rata Tk 4 million for every year of joining the national parliament -- equivalent to an expensive apartment in Gulshan for every year's membership in this exclusive club.

Election Commission, a classical Nidhi Ram Sharkar, lot of egotism without matching ability, is happy as long as they get expenditure bill of less than Tk 600,000. The way money was wasted on the voter list alone, people might not be too unhappy if somebody steals the taxpayer's money outright.

Metro Dhaka has only nine parliamentary constituencies, but the residents of the capital provide over eighty percent of the candidates in national assembly election. It is like tendering for business all over the countryside when only the first class contractors of Dhaka can compete.

The people of rural Bangladesh, where 80% of the people live, can only vote (if they are lucky), but cannot compete in the election because it is too expensive for them. That is how people outside Dhaka are deceived by a fine finesse in the name of so-called adult franchise and democracy. The all-important election for the fairness of governance in the present pattern of one vote in five years is dangerously close to a failed mechanism.

We have to quickly find out a more meaningful system of governance to earn the confidence of the people. After they have gone through three successive democratic franchises with tolerable interruption, rural people find fault in both election and absentee representation.

Democratically elected governments are legal, but when legality fails to blend with ethics, deprivation and frustration threaten the stability of a society. The unprecedented growth of terrorism is the result of social frustration. Democracy is increasingly failing to stop people from coming on to the streets for their basic needs.

The people of the countryside must have more participation and resident politicians of Dhaka must not monopolise the politics of Bangladesh. If the caretaker government is necessary for fair election, a minimum period of residency in the constituency may be made a condition for the representation of the people in the parliament.

Most of the black money is earned, and hoarded, in Dhaka. Politicians in the rural areas do not have that kind of money. Resident politicians should be empowered to contest the election in their home constituencies to cut down black money influence and muscle power. It will automatically reduce the election expenditure.

Besides, elected upazilla councils may not be a panacea, but they will fill the void and work as a brake on the free run of the non-resident politicians. That is why MPs and Dhaka based politicians are so much against the upazilla election. All quarters, including intellectuals, must ask for upazilla election along with the national one.

If Bangladesh could ever create autonomous regional governments, much of the concentration of power that is facilitating unprecedented corruption would start melting away in the competitive environment among the elected governments. The essence of democracy is in decentralization and debate. Local, regional, and central government together will anchor democracy in Bangladesh, break monopoly of power and cut down corruption.

The idea is neither new nor illogical. Between upazilla and central government, we are feeling the void of middle government (regional or provincial) by the bureaucrats in districts and divisions. It is ridiculous to conceive of an elected local government (upazilla) under bureaucratic middle government (districts and divisions). Those who are interested to see the people of Bangladesh get a better deal must work on three layers of government.