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Politics and our Constitution

Dr. Beial Husain Joy
The Constitution of Bangladesh is a product of the Liberation Struggle so to say. Soon after the independence, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman expressed his desire to get the constitution drafted for the new born country at its earliest. Only within eleven months, on 4tit November 1972, the final draft of the constitution of Bangladesh incorporating accumulated experience of the available modern constitutions was finalised. Considering the Constitutional history of India and Pakistan, when such a vast work of great importance was completed within a limited time, obviously it could not go through required in-depth research. Most of the provisions have been substantially borrowed from world constitutions especially from the South East Asian countries, although it has a number of distinct features.
The faults, potential ineffectiveness and unworkable provisions were hardly discussed in the Parliament on or before the day the Constitution of Bangladesh came into being. Then in the name of adapting provisions into the constitution, the politicians in power as and when felt necessary amended the Constitution, mostly either for their own protection or for their personal benefits instead of national interest. Perhaps realising the drawbacks, the Army Chief, General Moeen U Ahmed, said in a seminar on July 10, 2007, that “We need reform, we need a review of our constitution and let the parliament come and take over their responsibility and correct the constitution." Prom such statement, it appears that we have problems with our politics and defects in our constitution. Hence, the politics and the constitution both must undergo a process of reform and review, to protect the people from those who become rulers through wicked means as stated by Niccolo Machiavelli in his bookThe Prince.
The process of 1/11 is a judicial cum administrative one of reforming politics, with ultimate aim of handing over the power to honest and competent people's representatives, establishing democracy, freeing the society from corruption, crime and mal-administration. The constitution, being the supreme law of the land, should have been up-dated to cater for today's needs and aspirations, which our parliaments, our governments and our judiciary, till 1/11, drastically failed to do. This is why our politics is highly confronted with constant chaos, confusion and conflict Although the Constitution is the will ofthe people but its supremacy is in question today. The people from all over the country helplessly witnessed shameless amendments made to the constitution for personal, group or party interest, again and again. During the political crisis, Constitutional provisions were misinterpreted by party politicians and party professionals and even the party lawyers to their favour. Having no other alternative, in the interest of security and safety, peace and stability of our country, proclamation of emergency was inevitable.
From some quarters, questions did arise of abrogating -the1 Constitution. The constitution has assigned or distributed separate pow^ ers of the Republic to three individual organs, no one organ can encroach upon the other organs. But in practice, at least during the last three tenures of the governments, the Executive organ was found to dominate over the
Parliament and the Judiciary. There were no checks and balances. As a result, no one of the organs could effectively work either for the people or for the Republic, causing conflicts in politics, in the society, in economy, which ultimately led to today's political crisis. In upholding the Constitution, the caretaker government (CG) took a bold step to finally separate the Judiciary from the Executive, and the Judiciary acted immedi-ately and put the law into action to deliver fair justice to the accused, litigants and complainants.
The Indian Constitution has been reviewed at least eight times; our parliamentarians never gave any thought of doing so. The reviewing process could have been carried out by forming a "Constitution Commission" with independent specialized law-makers and lawyers, who would read the constitution religiously. The Commission could have its own research cell to re-consider every single provision of the constitution, to up-date, to amend, to fit to the modern democracy, finally to recommend to the Parliament to consider review of the required provisions of the constitution. During the last decade or so, the nation suffered from severe shortage of honest and competent leadership, in the traditional dynastic system one replaced another. Statesmanship among the politicians did not grow either.
Reforming process within the political parties is underway, but real intellects and educated personalities with honesty and competence are hardly seen as yet. Time has come, party leaderships may change more frequently until the right man is found to lead the nation. Such screening process was also experienced by the French until 1958. We. in Bangladesh, desperately need statesmen with competence and patriotism to rescue this generation from constitutional and political crisis and serve the generations to come. May be more and more think tank organizations are needed to concentrate on specialized areas of die society, economy, and politics to create public awareness, remove inequality from society, decentralise the administration, establish effective rule of law, improve quality of MPs and increase effectiveness of parliamentary standing committees; finally to install a modern democracy giving due respect to the supreme law of the land-- the Constitution.
Tho writer is a Barrister