Democracy gets to be enervated by a regular expression of platitudes. It is, in truth, a purposeful empowerment of citizens. It is a creation of space for people to speak up for their rights. It, in short, goes beyond elections, to translate the popular vote into the vibrancy we call modern statecraft.***

EVERYTHING seems to be in place for a reassertion of centralised government in Bangladesh. You only have to observe the many ways in which the administration has been trying to undermine the local government system. Maybe that is too strong a word to use here, but you really do not have any choice, have you? When the chairmen and members of the upazillas were elected, we all felt cheerful, even a trifle uplifted, about the possibility of political devolution finally making some inroads in our social system. That the elected upazillas would be in direct control of development work all over the country was somehow taken as a given. And that was because of our faith in democracy springing from the grassroots. After decades of a top-down approach to democracy, if you can at all call it democracy, there was finally an opportunity for citizens to experience pluralism at the various tiers of politics. We thought happy days were here again.

But that was not to be. Something happened to make our members of parliament think that with the upazillas in full steam, they would be missing out on all the chances they would have to influence policy making and its implementation. Of course that was a misplaced belief. Whatever it may have been, on that particular issue the interests of both the ruling party and the opposition converged: they all thought that lawmakers ought to have a supervisory, really dominant and domineering, role over the functioning of the upazillas. And that was it. The first blow against local government had been struck

And then came the next assault, when the government decided that employees of the government, in this case officers working at the upazilla level, would enjoy unprecedented powers over the elected upazilla chairmen and members. Now sit back and reflect on the mantra of change the men and women of the ruling

AwamiLeague preached on the eve of the general elections in late 2008. Everything, we were told in clear Obama-esque terms, would go through change, for the better. Now, as we look back at that promise, we know nothing has changed. It is all back to politics as usual.

It is not just the principle of devolution that has dark clouds hanging over it. Watch the hapless Ghulam Rahman doing all he can to save something of the dignity of the Anti-Corruption Commission in the face of the hard-jawed resolve of the government to emasculate the body into a shapeless, pointless amoeba-like organisation. You would like to go after a crooked bureaucrat and you have to go on your knees before the government to let you do that? If you would care to look at things a little more closely, you would spot a lot of anger that politicians keep spewing over the way the ACC behaved in the days when the caretakers

were in office.

To be sure, the ACC and with it the caretakers did certain things they could well have done without. But what you cannot deny is the reality, which is that under Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury the anti-graft body gave us great reason for hope. At last, or so we thought, here was a bunch of well-meaning men out to give us our very own version of America's FBI or India's CBI. That hope has by now been cracked. Chowdhury has been long gone and Rahman struggles to salvage some of the dignity the ACC has lost in the months since democracy was restored. That is pretty ironic, come to think of it. Democracy can only strengthen institutions. In our distressing case here in Bangladesh, it has been doing precisely the opposite. It has been causing a haemorrhaging of our institutions, of our sensibilities.

And it all makes distressing reading. When the minister for communications refuses to hand over documents relating to his ministry to a parliamentary standing committee, on the indefensible ground that matters of state secrecy could be endangered if he complies with the instruction, you wonder why he was let off so easily by the committee.

A parliamentary committee is never to be trifled with, assuming of course that the

individuals who constitute it are people committed to upholding the national interest and the law. Richard Nixon could not defy Congress over the issue of the Watergate tapes; and Tony Blair spent hours responding to questions from the Iraq inquiry committee over his decision to invade Baghdad. Now, you might laugh it all off, with the sneering suggestion that Bengalis are yet to reach a state where they can have their democracy operating at par with that in the West. But do not forget a simple fact: if you mean to have democracy, have it in full. If you cannot, drop the idea altogether. When a parliamentary committee summons a prime ministerial advisor and then mysteriously decides to let him off the hook by informing us that the issue has been resolved, we are not happy. Why take people for a ride? And where did transparency go missing here? Why speak of bravery and then go for pusillanimity?

Democracy gets to be enervated by a regular expression of platitudes. It is, in truth, a purposeful empowerment of citizens. It is a creation of space for people to speak up for their rights. It, in short, goes beyond elections, to translate the popular vote into the vibrancy we call modern statecraft.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star. E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk.