A milestone has been reached tn the soda, and political history of the nation by BNP agreeing to move a constitution amendment bill for i Parliamentary form ol government. I refer to It as a milestone not because of the form of government, which is though, an excellent thing to happen. I refer to the consensus reached among the poilti cal parses on the form of gov ernment. This consensus is the milestone which augurs well for a sustained progress towards democracy In the country.

The election to the parliament was a beautiful beginning. Hung parliament or not. It has made its mark. The State power has been passed on to the people's representatives, notwithstanding the serious differences of opinion between the government and the opposition benches and, on octa sions, near acrimonious debates. The dark cloud in the horizon resulting from the misgivings of the Acting President on the actual locus of State power, the constitutional versus the defacto situation. aired to the nation by him so forthrightly, although with statesmanlike restraint. Is thankfully passing

The parliament has estab lished the superstructure of people's representation. But it will be difficult for the parlla ment. by itself, to withstand the constant invidious onslaught of would be dictators. It is now the time to consolidate the gains by creating the edifice on which the system can rest and thrive, that is, by

establishing democratic local governments.

Some kind of formal local representative governments have been experimented with for nearly three generations, from the days of the Village Self Government Act of 1910. Limited franchise in the course of time gave way to universal adult suffrage. In later years Field Marshal Ayub Khan, the military dictator of Pakistan, changed the system. The union boards were replaced by union councils and district boards, which had elected chairman, were replaced by district councils with appointed officials as chairman. New tiers, not quite representative, viz. thana councils and divisional councils, were formed. Under the dictate of the Field Marshal, these councils were al^o headed by government officials. These officials, in conformity with the past British Raj tradition, were always persons from outside the concerned districts. The idea of placing officials from outside the districts to head these councils stemmed from several notions. One was that the people, the citizens, are not to be trusted. Another was that the government and the people were two distinct entitles that of the ruler and the ruled. Further, that the senior officials must be from outside the district, so that they could maintain a distance from the local population, especially from their politics, and do the bidding of the central authority, disregarding the wishes and preferences of the affected people.

Before the usurpation of State power by the Field Marshal, some facade of political norm and morality was maintained. The chairman of district boards were not under the supervision of any government official, although the Divisional Commissioner, a civil servant, was the controlling officer of district boards for approval of budget and au dlt purposes. These boards were actually controlled by the provincial government. But the facade ended there. The result of elections were not yet sacrosanct. The provincial gov ernment could disregard the result of elections and at any time supercede a district or union board to take over their administrations. The practice was a throw back to the days of the Raj. which the laterly democratically elected leaders of the provincial government did not care to change, but Instead used It for their own Clitlcal ends. This disregard

• the sanctity of voters' rights ran throughout the elective hierarchy. As the provincial government could supercede elected district and union boards, so the central government could (and actually did) supercede elected provincial governments. The final nail tn the coffin of local representative government was the system of upazila partshads to facilitate further and defacto centralization of power by the national govern ment. Introduced by a Bengali version of military dictator. Lt Gen (Retd) HM Ershad.

Talking about the British

and their Raj. they seemed to be suffering from Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde syndrome While one must not forget their determination to maintain the Raj mostly through devious means, they also left a legacy of the due process of law. In our own wisdom we have very ably destroyed this legacy. One example was the system that the sanction enforcing instruments of State power should be subject to civilian and Judicial supervision.

An instrument of State sanction is the police force. During the days of the Raj and the early period of Pakistani days, before the Field Marshal consolidated his hold over Pakistan and Bangladesh, this force at the field level was utilized as an instrument of mag Istracy which was subject to review by senior Judicial officers. The field level force was the actual law enforcing agency with inherent legal rights. The headquarters, as the name suggests, that is. the inspectorate general, was more of a supervisory and monitoring authority. This was also changed in time, to suit "our own genius" (The Field Marshal was quite fond of this expression). The force was taken out of the magisterial supervision, so that it could be used directly and openly for political ends. We can now sec and assess the re suk.

One must hasten to add that even the formal magisterial control was not also free of political nuance. The magistrates were non-locals of the districts and could be Influenced with

promise of reward of better appointments, promotion*, etc Some magistrates did take advantage of the promises and were duly re warded, but those who did not

Independent The ideal situation was when both the magistrate and the police chief sons The district wasX largely spared of arbitrary actions. But ft is worth repeating that all these officials were Imposed from the central authority upon the local population. This was an Inherent weakness and a basic cause of instability of the superstructure, the representative government at the apex.

Removal of Weaknesses

The remedy lies in the removal of the weakness. The political parties. In the government and in the opposition, must review the present sy*

for a reform. Actually the word reform is an under statement Some basic changes has to be introduced. Learning from the past, a proposition for change is made here.

But firstly about the parliament. The members must agree to become full time parliamentarians. with nohangup about local administration. The members must devote their time fully to national legislative work, and to monitor, review, debate and lay down national policies in respect of all administrative matters, but leave the actual day to day administration and decision making tn the hands of ministers of the government. The members must not become mini presidents of the constituen-cies/districts and not use relief goods or food for work materials as a source of patronage. The people elect them to run the national affairs, not to manage local governments. Appointing them as local council chairman or city administrators/ mayors is a negation of democratic principles, a rebuff to voters' rights.

Tiers of Local Councils

I propose that there should be several tiers of elective local councils with commensurate functions and responsibilities and with taxation powers. Taking into account the historical precedent and the population and geographic factors, these administrative tiers should ideally be the village level, union level, district level and division level. The divisions could be called provinces. The current four administrative divisions will be four provinces. Over the next 30-40 years, the old districts (the greater districts as is now commonly known) could become provinces. Likewise the present villages, unions and districts could be retained unless there Is a demand for re-drawal of boundaries to take Into account changed situation e.g., change of river courses, redirection of economic links, etc. These could also be mutated after 30 years or so. As Bangladesh is ethnically and linguistically a homogeneous country, only administrative and economic necessities will be the deciding factors.

These councils will, at various levels, have functions and responsibilities for such local affairs as administration of land, maintenance of law and order, administration of justice below the supreme court, road and river communication within the respective boundaries (the national government will have jurisdiction over inter provincial communication) and Implementation of industrial and commercial policies Formulated at the national level.

The tenure of the different levels of councils will be short to make them effectively iemocratic and put a damper in vote buying. The Village government will have yearly tenure, the union and district councils two yearly tenure and the provincial government three yearly tenure. In order to

make thia aystem take root* and bloom. It la essential thai there should be no law to alio* supercession of these govern ment*. They must run the ful tenure without impediment dissolve the councils and seel new election. But considerin the short span. It to hard!) likely that they will wish It so Furthermore. It is imperative that all the personnel to ser vice the responsibilities shouk be recruited and appointed lo cafiy. by the various tiers without assignments from a centra] authority. The nations government will have liatoor officers at provincial levels.

Constitutional Provision

The suggestions are no utopian nor impractical. Thes. could be Implemented over ; period of time, say 3 years What is necessary to to mak constitutional provision for ii now for local representative governments and local c1vi services What to needed evei more than a constitutiona change Is for the political par ties to make indepth study o their Jong term plans for re establishing representativi government in the country ant rums on the various possible alternatives. This column ii not a place for moralizing oi sermonizing the political par ties. But let me restate the ob vlous and the well known People have various levels o needs, their immediate loca requirements and their na-tional aspirations. They know better what their local wishes requirements and preferences are, and how they want U manage their own immediate communities. These shouk not be left to the dictatioi from the top and impiementec by officials who have no lon| term interest in the loca communities. These should tx decided and Impiementec democratically at the loca level. And there lies the cruof the problem, the fear at thi national .level that some oi even many of these local com munities may decide to eleci representatives of differeni hues than that at national level The political party controlling the centre may feel badly aboui It. but It Is not necessarily ominous for the nation. Thli should be part of the democratic political game.

We all do agree (don't we?) that democracy is not a rabble rousing slogan only to motivate street demonstrations agalnsi military rulers. It is an idea for which people have died* It is essentially a way of life, a summation of a contract between individuals and the society, and between one group of people with other groups to settle their differences peacefully and in mutual tolerance, without recourse to violence or suppression of divergent opinions. In a national context it should mean a system In which uniform decisions are taken for all citizens, whether individuals or groups who hold different opinions on any matter. It subsumes that the decision alms to further a common cause for the benefit of the society as a whole. Its precondition is that the people who are affected by a decision freely participate In the decision making process either directly or through representatives, while conceding that any particular view, especially the minority view, may not be accepted. Unavoidably majority opinion will prevail, until and unless the once minority opinion can transform the majority. But Ideally mutual tolerance should develop into consensus in most cases. The responsibility of the leaders of political parties Is to make it happen.

The author is former Secretary, Industry and Defence, Govt of Bangladesh and a former UNIDO adviser on industrial development for Asia-Pacific. He also served as Principal Secretary to the President Mr Justice Abu Sayeed Chowdhury.