The sphere of governance is very wide. Governance issues exist in personal life, such as how one schedules one's time, and may possibly be tackled in a better way under the guidance of an able guardian. There are certain governance issues of a locality or society (e.g. maintaining healthy environment) which need consolidated effort by a group of people under effective leadership. Covering all other segments is the governance of the state which extends to all the localities and reaches to each and every individual within a state territory.

The responsibility of state governance lies with the national government. Anything good or bad occurring within the country or with its citizen anywhere is to be considered within the jurisdiction of governance by the government. In a way, the leader of the national government must be able to assume the role of an able guardian of each and every citizen and also that of an effective leader for all the localities within the territorial boundary of the country to be able to fulfill the expectations of the nation.

This is of course a Herculean task for the head of government of Bangladesh with a vast population of 140 million within an area of about 144,000 square kilometres. Bangladesh is still listed as an under-developed (or developing, as is called affectionately and modestly by our donors) country. As such, it is understood that in Bangladesh it is difficult to achieve good governance as per the standard of a developed nation, and that is not the expectation of the nation.

There exists a government in Bangladesh with the prime minister as its head and having a cabinet of ministers assisted by a big bureaucracy. Citizens of the country spend a large sum of money for maintaining the governmental expenditure. So it is rational that the people would have some expectation to feel the presence of government in their life, and that too, in a positive way. People for the same reason have a right to become frustrated in case that expectation is not met. There are far too many examples to quote in support of the statement that in Bangladesh today citizens do not find the government at the time of need.

There is hardly any doubt that most of us would accept the statement that people face governmental agencies as an unreasonable and sometimes brutal foe and consider the same as a source of harassment and torment. There are cases of no governance and bad governance under any standard which are too rampant to be considered exceptional or accidental. It may be concluded that Bangladesh is an ill-managed country, lacking good governance.

It is obvious that in the absence of good governance, any planning or program taken by the government cannot be implemented in its proper perspective. It may be quoted as an example that Bangladesh has a constitution which is acclaimed with praise by many international experts in the line and also there is no dearth of fair laws and rules. But practically speaking, it is found that in most of the cases neither the constitution nor the laws or rules could achieve the goal for which those were formulated.

In most of the cases, it is seen that when new laws or rules are imposed, they become a source of problem for the society. They are misused and abused in a way causing more sufferings to the people. At times, the particular harm done by a rule becomes more problematic than the difficulty for the solution of which the rule was imposed at the first place. In short, it may be said, in spite of so many good laws, the rule of law cannot really be considered to hold sway in Bangladesh.

The causes of this distortion, if identified, would show corruption as the major cause, but mismanagement due to negligence or lack of knowledge, etc. is also a contributory factor. The root cause for all the said menace is in fact lack of accountability in the administration. To achieve good governance, accountability of the administration at all stages needs to be established. It is a well known fact that the accountability of the lower strata of administration is to be ensured by the subsequent higher level and good governance trickles down from the top.

So, the topmost management of the government (prime minister and cabinet) must become pioneer in being responsible for their actions and activities to the people. If they could be made aware of their duties and obligations and could also be made to suffer dire consequences (by the people of the country) in case they fail, they would probably be more enthusiastic in ensuring accountability of the administration under them.

The democratic system of governance is widely appreciated because it is supposed to provide the best guarantee for accountability of the government to the people, and that is the reason it results in good governance. Inversely, in case there is lack of good governance in a country, there is reason to doubt whether the system of governance is democratic in reality.

Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, the chief executive officer of the country (the PM) along with the whole cabinet is practically running the affairs of the state without any effective means of accountability to the people. As per our constitution, the responsibility of making the whole cabinet accountable to the people lies with the parliament. Government ministers are to face the parliament members on the floor of the parliament and also in different parliamentary standing committees to explain their actions.

The idea was to ensure accountability of the government to the people through their elected representatives in parliament. But our constitution bars government party MPs (in fact, all MPs) to go against the dictate of their party. This provision of the constitution allows the government to have captive support of the MPs belonging to the government party for all its activities.

Parliament, without the majority of government party MPs on its side to scrutinise activities of the government, has reduced to nothing but a debating club where it is known to all that the government side would always be the winner in the ultimate voting. As such, the idea of parliament making government responsible to the people is in fact not working. Parliament has lost its effectiveness now, not only to the citizens of the country but even to the members of parliament. Quorum crisis has become chronic and the parliament may be considered dysfunctional for all practical purposes.

With this provision of the constitution and also due to our feudalistic political culture, the chief executive officer of the country has become too powerful to face meaningful challenge from any quarter. It is observed that our governmental system in practice has made the PM the focal point of all activities and the PMO the most important institution of the state, so much so that it is referred by many to be the government of the prime minister, government by the prime minister, and government for the prime minister. The prime minister exercises enormous power without any sort of accountability to anybody. Under the circumstance, it might not be an overstatement to say that the present system has resulted in dictatorial rule of the prime minister.

When the PM and cabinet members can remain beyond any accountability for their day to day activities it is not natural to develop accountability down below. This may be considered the cause of the present state of affairs in Bangladesh where good governance is rare if not totally absent. For establishing good governance, the PM and the entire cabinet need to be made accountable to the people on a day to day basis. The parliament needs to perform its desired function of obtaining accountability of the government regularly. Necessary amendments to the constitution must be carried out to ensure this.

Government should not be accountable once only on the election date at the end of its five-year term. Not only that, but conditions also exist for success of that one day of accountability. The election would have to be conducted in a free and fair way so that it could reflect the will of the people without any undue influence and distortion.

It is seen there is a continuous effort by the government from day one of assuming power to start influencing and preparing the environment in their favour for manipulating the next general election results. This is an effort to bypass the final say of the people on the performance of the government. The election commission must be made more effective and powerful to monitor and stop those unethical acts and ensure a free and fair pool, reflecting the true wishes of the people.

G M Quader is a member of parliament.