Good Governance in Bangladesh and my Opinion

Introduction:
The concept of "governance" is not new. It is as old as human civilization. Simply put
"governance" means: the process of decision-making and the process by which
decisions are implemented (or not implemented). Governance can be used in
several contexts such as corporate governance, international governance, national
governance and local governance. Good governance denotes a desirable state of
affairs. A comprehensive and precise definition of good governance is still awaited.

The etymological roots of the term can be traced to the Latin verb for steering a ship,
Gubernare, from which we get the root for governor, government and governance.
The World Bank (1992) defined governance as the means in which power is
exercised in the management of a countrys economic and social resources for
development. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) views
governance as the exercise of economic, political and administrative authority to
manage a countrys affairs at all levels.

Origin of good governance:

Accountability, transparency and participation are the three key principles of good
governance. Good governance is a political term and World Bank is the proposer of
this term. There is a historical background behind it. Since 1978, due to uninternational standardized management, especially of some countries in Latin
America, World Bank proposed a political term called good governance. Later the
World Bank identified four principles of god governance, viz., accountability,
transparency, predictability and participation. These four governance pillars are

universally applicable regardless of the economic orientation, strategic priorities or

policy choices of the government.

Good governance in Bangladesh:

After a valiant war of liberation and gaining a joyous victory and coveted
independence, Bangladesh as a state did not have a happy start. It started with a warravaged economy and social unrest exacerbated possession of firearms by many who
did not deposit them to legal authorities after the war. In fact, governance started with
little or no experience of the people at the help of affairs. The new government could
never consolidate its power in sufficient measure to become an effective government.
Condition of good governance could, therefore, never be fulfilled. In the absence of a
truly effective government and good governance all conceivable and inconceivable
forms of human vices gripped the nation to eat into its potentials and promises.
Todays difficulties and problems of good governance are in many ways attributable
to the difficult start that we made as a new republic in 1971.

Assuming that Bangladesh is a modern state, still struggling to stand on its own feet,
we need to identify the sectors and institutions that need to be corrected, values that
have to be upheld, and principle and norms that must be enforced. If we want to
established good governance in Bangladesh we need to focus attention on the
following.

(01) Participatory democracy:

Free, fair and neutral election on the basis of universal adult franchise is the first
condition of democracy. This condition was never fully realized in Bangladesh

Although we have a relatively independent Election Commission which happens to be

a constitutional institution it could never act like an independent body. Vote-ragging,
creation undue pressure on the voters, obstructing the voters to come to the Polling
Stations, capturing polling centers by party Mastans, casting false votes, use of black
money and bribery, threat, violence, intimidation and terrorism

have routinely

accompanied election in Bangladesh.

Fall of military-cum-civilian government in 1990 and introduction of so called caretaker government temporarily improve the situation. Some loopholes and
shortcomings of the formation of the care-taker government, made critical situation.
So, in order to remove this backlog we have to make the Election Commission more
independent and powerful. Neighboring India has a very strong election commission.
Bangladesh cab use Indian experience to reform her own.

(02) Law making agencies:

Apparently there is no dearth of good laws in the country. But their implementation is
disappointing. Parliament along with various government and semi-government
bodies are the law making agencies of the country in a broad sense. This is not the
one and only duty of the parliament to enact law, it has an implied obligation to see
that all other organs and departments of the government function well.

Grave national issues, problems of governance, issues of human rights are rarely
debated in our parliament. Government encourages only those issues for discussions
in which they feel comfortable. Opposition has little opportunity to engage in fruitful
deliberations in any issue of national concern. When occasion arise, government and
opposition fight in all sorts of conceivable and inconceivable language and also in

physical pose and postures, to discredit each other, rather than speak out for any issue
of national concern.

A credible parliament can always oversee the activities of the executive in various
ways. In our parliamentary system of government, the ministers are not individually
responsible to the parliament. Our parliamentary committees are supposed to do the
act but they have totally failed in their tasks.

Virtually there is no criticism of the government/ executive policies and activities by

the members of the ruling party in the parliament. In the absence of opposition in the
parliament by way of their boycott or frequent walk-out or not being provided
sufficient opportunities by the speaker to speak in the way they want, parliament is a
virtual rubber-stamp of executive. More ever, the constitutional provision on floor
crossing under Art. 70 is a practical barrier for going against the decisions of ones
own party. This leads to gross party dictatorship. In fact to dictatorship of the top boss
of the party, this is unhealthy for democratic development and also for good
governance.

Executive Bodies Including Law enforcing agencies of the state:

Executing bureaucracy is the centre piece of the problems of good governance.
Bureaucracy in Bangladesh is too powerful to be good. It is first of all explained by
weak and unstable political leadership. Vices which have accumulated over the year
in bureaucracy are multifarious nefarious forms of corruption, lack of transparency
and accountability, non- performance of official duties and sheer inefficiency. These
vices are allies of one another and breed one another growing spirally and forming a
vicious circle to strangle the life of the nation. Files do not move without tadbir or

bribes or kickbacks, corrupting and slowing down the entire process of nation
development. Files move not only slow but travel long distance passing through many
instances and requiring so many signatures as to plunge the entire process into a
corruption grid. There is practically no panacea against corruption, for the top brass of
bureaucracy and political leadership who are to take measures against corruption are
themselves corrupt.

Non-transparency in administration is breeding ground for corruption. Bangladesh

excels in non-transparency. The Officials Secrets Act of 1923, a weapon of sustaining
colonial administration, is till the bible of our administration. It needs to be replaced
by sort of right to information Act to ensure administrative transparency. Many
countries including neighboring Sri Lanka and India have such Acts. Our present state
of administrative transparency leaves little room for good governance.

To implement the constitutional provision for Ombudsman (Art.77) to oversee the

activities of the administration; to establish an anti-graft commission and a national
human rights commission and to grant autonomy to national electronic media are long
outstanding issues in Bangladesh. The present government takes some concrete steps
to establish an anti-graft commission but their proposed composition and selection
criteria leaves great doubt as to whether they can function independently of the
influence of the government. Our incumbent governments always want to cling to
power to enjoy exercising power and to make money and build property.

Rule of law:
Rule of law is the bad-lock of democracy. Amongst the organs of the state, judiciary
is called upon to play the most important role to provide for rule of law. In the context
of apparent executive arbitrariness and malpractices in Bangladesh, judiciarys role
and functions can hardly be over exaggerated. Judiciary ensures compliance with laws
of the land by the organs of the state, law enforcing agencies, state officials as well as
by citizens and private enterprises. Judiciary is a safeguard against violation of human
rights. Fundamental rights enshrined in our constitution together with the power of
the Supreme Court to enforce theses rights under writ jurisdiction of its high court
division are considered fundamental guarantee of life and liberty of the citizens.

In the context of Bangladesh, judiciary has an enhanced role to protect the rights and
interest of the marginalized sections of the people. For this an efficient and effective
judiciary needs to be independent and accountable. Are the conditions for
independence and accountability of judiciary present in Bangladesh? Answer is both
Yes and No. No, answer is more applicable to lower judiciary exercising criminal
jurisdiction. Magistracy in Bangladesh exercises both executive and judicial power.
Magistracy is an executive arm and depends on higher executive will of their
activities which include exercise of criminal jurisdiction. Demand for separation of
judicial magistracy from that of executive is longstanding. Although Bangladesh
shares a common legacy with India and Pakistan inheriting a common legal system
from Britain, and while India and Pakistan enforced such separation in early 1970s.
Bangladesh has so far failed to do so. This is so in spite of the fact that there is clear
directive of the Supreme Court appellate division given to the government in Mazdar
Hossain V. The state (2000) that judicial magistracy must be separated form the

executive, that it must exercise only judicial power being responsible and accountable
to higher judicial authority and not to any higher executive hierarchy. The
government of Bangladesh on various pretexts is routinely praying for time, getting it
and endlessly delaying to implement judicial verdict.

Under original provision of the 1972 constitution, the Supreme Court exercised,
exclusive control over the lower court judges and judicial magistrates i.e. their
posting, transfer, promotion, leave and other disciplinary matters. Now the control has
gone to the executive, although it is obliged to exercise such control in consultation
with the Supreme Court. The present position leaves wide scope for the executive to
interfere in and influence the activities of the lower judiciary seriously undermining
its independence.

International development community, globalization, governance and

human rights:
Bangladesh substantially depends on external aid for its development. Since its
independence in 1971, Bangladesh has got massive aid from the world community
which she has been unable to use rationally due to bad governance. Aid is continuing
to flow to Bangladesh along with other opportunities of globalization. Donors
community keeps on emphasizing the need for improving governance and prescribes
various measures. They particularly emphasize the need for transparency and
accountability in governance and improving human rights condition. They also point
out misuse of funds and inefficiency. They criticize overstaffing of administration and
advise to reduce manpower and drastically cut unproductive expenditures. They
rightly advise to computerize administrative record keeping and take the help of ICT
to make administration dynamic. Modern technologies have great power to require

Less manpower, increase efficiency, reduce scope for idle working hours, keep the
personnels busy and active, ushering in an era of administrative dynamism.

Expert opinion regarding establishing good governance in

Bangladesh:
What does good governance actually mean? How does one define it? In her opening
address at the Bangladesh Development Forum in Paris on march 13, 2002 Ms.
Mieko Nishimizu, the vice president of the south Asian region of the world bank
partially defined good governance in the context of Bangladesh as follows:

1. Taxes due are collected and actually go to the treasury and the revenues are
spent in financing development programs.
2. Public procurements are transparent and efficient.
3. Universities and colleges are tranquil places for learning, instead of places of
political agitation.
4. Professors ands teachers are educators, qualified, certified, and motivated to
teach fulltime, instead of just collecting pay checks or conducting private
tutorials outside the classroom.
5. It means no power outages. The supply is stable. The energy industry is well
regulated. Consumers pay for what they use instead of overloading the system
by theft.
6. It means needy people can get basic health care and drugs at public heath
facilities instead of having to buy them in the market place.
7. exporters can compete better because(a) trade logistics work better;

(b) Goods move through ports (sea ports and land ports) speedily without
extortion.
8. It means captains of industry can focus son their business growth and
maintain an honest bottom-line, instead of protecting what they have earned
by harassment and extortion.
9. It means the laws of the land exist for the public interest. They are enforced as
such by the judiciary, police and other law enforcement agencies, earning the
peoples trust through their professional competence and integrity.
10. It means bankers make good loans for real investments that fuel growth,
instead of saddling themselves and the nationals economy with bad debts.
11. It means rich defaulters repay their loans, as regularly as poor micro-credit
borrowers.
12. It means order in society and economy.
13. It means hard working, honest, and passionate people can use their synergy
for self-improvement to make themselves proud.
14. It means saving the nations finances from lost resources and the economy
form lost opportunities.

In reality the above points only a part of the concept of good governance that came
into existence in the early 1990s. The term good governance means difference
things to different people, depending on their disciplinary domains.

My opinion regarding establishing good governance

While agreeing with the above discussion I want to add some other issue which is
much more relevant to ensure good governance in Bangladesh. This are(1) Bangladesh is mainly depends upon the external aids for its development.
She gets a huge amount of foreign aid but in spite of this aid we cannot
remove the title of developing country because we failed to utilize this
money properly, accurately with well-management system.
(2) Our education system should be strong and stable. It is continuously been
changed in the past time. Thats why our education al system struggle to
stand on its own feet, whish is an important and vial obstacle to ensure good
governance.
(3)

Most of our people are illiterate and they did not aware about their rights.
This is another important ground why we do not implement good governance
in our country.

(4) As I said before, Bangladesh receive a huge amount of external aids and the
foreign bodies by giving aid impose some condition which sometimes
protect our government to take people oriented decision.
(5) This is our constitutional obligation to ensure separation of power to ensure
good governance. But no government takes any initiative to separate the
executive form judiciary.
(6)

In order to ensure good governance, the judiciary must be accountable for

their activities. We know that the Public Prosecutors (PP) and Attorney
Generals are government employee. They must be independent and
accountable for their activities and never be influenced by the governance.

(7) Our law enforcing agencies like-police, BDR, Rapid Action Battalion
(RAB), must be accountable for their activities to ensure good governance.
(8) Our law making agencies should enact some new laws to establish our petty
rights in respect of nuisance, tort, etc. through which we can easily go
through the court procedure for instant and urgent remedy for ensure good
governance because we know delay defeat equity.
(9) Government should strengthen the system of ombudsman as has recently set
up in tax sector to be known as tax ombudsman.
(10) Strengthen and ensuring the independence of Election Commission as good
and integrated persons may fell interest to compete in the election.
(11) Our parliament should amend some constitutional provision like floorcrossing to ensure participatory democracy.
(12) Our planning ministry should make better and effective future plan to
conduct her governmental activities.
(13) I think that, democracy is for educated people. But in our country most of
our members of parliament are not well educated. So we have to enact new
law though that the person wants to participate in the election should have
minimum educational qualification.
(14) Nepotism is another curse of our politics- and administration. The rules in
our country pursuer nepotism. They give privilege and under advantage to
their family members, kiths and kinds on public resources. So the mass
people remain after regime.
(15) The fund flow in Bangladesh is not smooth the local government, especially
the union parishad. Besides, this fund is not utilized properly and very often

diverted to other purposes. So the ordinary people can not get efforts, if any,
of ensuring good governance.
(16) In true and real sense the application of rule of law in Bangladesh follows a
souse of selective and discretionary application. It is said that laws are there
but there are applied only in favor of privilege people. As a result justices
suffer and denied to the common people and this environment affect our
rights of the poor and the social place elides although that is an important
aspect of good governance.
(17) Corruption is a big obstacle in the way of good governance in Bangladesh. It
prevented a fair distribution of national wealth and broadened the gap
between rich and poor.
(18) Lack of bureaucratic accountability can be attributed inter-alia to
bureaucratic corruption.
(19) Positive reformation in local government system needed to ensure good
governance in the local levels.

Conclusion:
Good governance defines an ideal which is difficult to achieve in its totality. however,
to ensure sustainable human development; actions must be taken to work towards this
ideal. Major donors and international financial institutions, like the IMF or World
Bank are increasingly basing their aid and loans on the condition that reforms
ensuring good governance are undertaken.