The interim government must not fail

We now have another opportunity to get things right. We must not fail this time. Challenges are many and it will take intelligence, commitment, patience and luck to emerge unscathed out of this mess.

The main challenge is to manage aspirations and expectations. We obviously want everything: we want roads to be safe, health services to be cheap and high quality, we want good schools, inexpensive electricity, low inflation, zero corruption, professional police services, an accountable administration and judiciary, rule of law, social justice, jobs…the list is endless. 

And we want all this right away! Our impulse for instant gratification runs strong as we righteously scream for the resignation, arrest, incarceration or even "phashi" of anyone and for anything, expecting the government to immediately deliver.

Unfortunately, there are no quick fixes. The challenges facing us are complex and will require time and effort. Time, however, is not unlimited, and my understanding is that it is more limited than we think.

For one thing, the current mood of victory and jubilation will soon give way to recrimination, infighting, impatience, and as these intensify, our poor advisers will find themselves beleaguered, and only the toughest will keep going while others will decide to leave.

It would be naïve to think that all the major stakeholders will keep their peace and hold their tongues for very long. The chaos has not subsided yet; we are ruled by emotion, instinct, and plain disregard for rules, norms and values – these have been the worst casualty of a long period of abject disregard for the rule of law.

In the meantime, vultures are circling the skies and have begun to sweep down upon media houses, banks, and vantage positions from which economic rents can be extracted.

Same old wine?

Initial signs show that the playbook of governance has not shifted very much. Just as top BNP leaders were once accused of setting buses on fire, so now we see top AL leaders being accused of killings occurring even in the remotest of districts.

The horrific scenes that we see at our court premises are no different, perhaps even worse compared to what we have seen in the past even though we have a neutral, non-political government in place.

Nobody is talking about judiciary reforms before calling on the justices to annul constitutional amendments. Let me repeat: the playbook used by AL and BNP before it remains very much in active use. This is a problem for a new Bangladesh.

It would be naïve to think that all the major stakeholders will keep their peace and hold their tongues for very long. The chaos has not subsided yet; we are ruled by emotion, instinct, and plain disregard for rules, norms and values – these have been the worst casualty of a long period of abject disregard for the rule of law.

What is the interim government to do? It must be pragmatic and realistic. It must carefully assess what reforms it can deliver upon and what must await a democratically elected government.

It should, however, lay out a concrete plan of action indicating its priority areas. We have discussed reforms for many years, even decades, so an action plan ought not to pose any serious challenges.

However, at the very outset, the new government needs to send out some strong powerful signals that indicate its broad commitment to democratic practice, judicial reforms, rule of law, and intolerance to corruption.

Perhaps the most important signal it should send out is our belief in an inclusive and just socio-economic system under an overall liberal democratic-secular framework. These signals remain weak.

Priorities

The first question really is, how do we prioritise our interim goals? Should we set ourselves a maximal set of goals? Or should we set ourselves a minimal set of critical goals? Or perhaps strike a note somewhere between the two?

The second, and far more important question is, how do we implement reforms, especially institutional reforms? We have almost zero experience here, and so must rediscover the wheel.

We could learn from the experience of other countries that have made the transition – Singapore would be an excellent model that we could explore – their experience is more recent, they too were a British colony like us and have inherited similar systems of governance, and more importantly, they have been able to modify and build upon those systems to create superb outcomes.

If you wish to look elsewhere – that's fine too, but please do not follow another South Asian country in this regard.

We would also simply have to use our common sense and be ready to make mistakes, learn from mistakes, and then move forward.

All this will require setting up a task force for each department or institution that will be tasked with drawing up plans after careful study and discussion. Such task forces could be aided by consultants drawn from, for example, the Singapore government, and international agencies.

They would then have to operate within a specific time frame. What we need to do is to restructure, get rid of obsolete positions, put in place new positions, identify clear qualifications and experience for recruitment and promotion, have a proper system for staff evaluation, re-examine the system of salaries and incentives, and place special emphasis on building a strong HR department, a strong and reliable system of financial accounts, and a dependable audit mechanism.

Third party monitoring of HR and Finance would be crucial. While some of these mechanisms exist, these will require to be reformatted and revamped.

Anyone who has worked in government will know how intractable these quite basic prerequisites of governance are likely to be.

Time is not going to be our friend, and we certainly do not have an endless amount of it to do what we must. We need to start the journey by initially picking one sector of reform to pilot out ideas and approaches. We need to throw sufficient resources at the project so that it does not end up as a failure.

If we can fix one institution, we can scale up quickly – this is the good old fashioned NGO way which I personally think is the best approach.

Which sector should we choose? We should not choose the most difficult sector nor the least difficult one. An "average" sort of sector will do fine although I cannot really think of any easy sector!

The set of priority reforms must reflect and inform our overarching goal: to bring in a vibrant democracy and along with it all the necessary components needed for it to succeed.

Media: A free, credible and independent media is crucial to fight the war against unscrupulous social media, fake news, and false narratives.

Election Commission: A powerful and independent EC is the cornerstone of credible elections. The key question is whether some form of interim arrangement will need to be continued for, say, the next 20 years, and if so, how will such an arrangement be constituted.

My feeling is that the incumbent government, by law, could disempower itself before elections so that it cannot interfere. This assumes that key institutions have not been/cannot be politicised ever again. If de-politicisation does not work, the "interim government" formula is the only option.

We all understand that fundamental reforms will need to be carried out in the sphere of public administration, the judiciary, the police, NBR, state-owned banks and industries, and within political parties. I don't see the interim government having sufficient time to see all of these through.

What they can do is to set out a road map, begin the process in earnest, and ensure that all political parties commit themselves to the reforms publicly and through their manifestos.

A great way to start would be to put in place the appropriate legal frameworks after due changes, modifications, and refinements.

For democracy to work, a sector that will need to be addressed head-on, is the reform of political parties and the need to abide by a code of conduct.

All of us have ideas about what such a code might involve, and the current government should be well positioned to come up with one, obviously after discussion with stakeholders.

There are significant low-hanging fruits that should be easy to pluck. These relate to policy reforms as opposed to institutional reforms, and therefore only require a few signatures to change.

The separation of the executive from the judiciary should be top on the list. Reforms to the Bangladesh Bank charter to ensure its autonomy should also be relatively easy. There are also various crony-friendly rules in the banking and financial sectors that could be changed.

In addition, the autonomy of various institutions in the public sector (including my previous institution, the BIDS) could be re-established and returned to its status-quo ante.

There are also likely to be many subtle benefits given to crony capital in the guise of tax forgiveness, subsidies, and duty waivers which need to be weeded out. Our duties and taxes must be realigned to promote diversified exports and employment.

Conspiracy

The student-led movement was undoubtedly indigenous. However, various analysts including Jeffery Sachs have spoken of possible US involvement and infiltration of the movement. This is a serious allegation that will require thorough investigation.

We should not have any qualms about forging a better relationship with the West. This relationship, however, would only be meaningful if it goes well beyond the usual Western rhetoric urging democracy, good governance, labour rights and so on designed to expand its own empire.

We have had enough of that sort of useless advice. We have strong developmental aspirations to follow in the footsteps of the Asian Tigers. We need access to Western markets, transfer of technology, and assistance in capacity building in science, engineering, technology and AI.

We need to have at least one world class "Institute of Technology" within the next five years. We need massive investments in infrastructure. Help us with these and you will have our friendship, and access to a potentially huge market of 170 million souls.

End note

This is our last chance to usher democracy into Bangladesh. Too many lives have been lost in its pursuit since 1947 when we became free from colonial rule. It was thwarted time and again by hostile forces within and without.

We cannot afford to waste this chance again. We do not want to witness another mass upheaval, another bout of violence to settle scores, another political crisis – all because of the greed and arrogance of our rulers and their cronies, and their desire to rule forever! Nor do we want to witness the beginning of another set of authoritarian rulers and despots.

We are lucky to have Professor Yunus with us to lead the charge. He is the only person in the country I can think of who can unite us and find a way for us to resolve our differences so that we can emerge as a strong democratic country with a vibrant economy.

Let us show the world that we can be a Muslim-majority state with a strong democracy; that we can continue our great economic journey taking all our people along with us including farmers, women, and other so-called minorities.

Let us show them that we can indeed develop our own model of a just society. Professor Yunus enjoys tremendous international goodwill. At this critical juncture of our story, Bangladesh needs all the goodwill that it can get.

Our enemies are waiting for us to fail. We cannot afford to oblige them. My sombre warning to all is this: Failure now would leave the door open to foreign intervention and subsequent loss of sovereignty and independence that we attained after a thousand years of repression.

You have been warned.

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KAS Murshid is an author, economist, and former Director General of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS)