Democracy in Crisis

The liberal democratic values and the constitutional system have suffered serial reversals in Bangladesh, accompanied by a trend towards authoritarian and unaccountable government. The failure of the political system and politicians is blamed conventionally. That alone cannot explain the reversals sufficiently; the deep conflict of secular nationalism and liberal democracy with communal and authoritarian political culture explain the political and constitutional regresses. The revisionist history explains the revival of communal politics and rise of fundamentalism, military coup de’etat and hegemony, constitutional change which introduces communal elements and undermines the fundamental human rights and freedoms, and the struggle between the people for their democratic rights and the organizations of the state which unlawfully arrogate power and use it to suppress those rights. The election due in 2006 was aborted because the institutions of the state had been suborned and politicized badly. Even the minimum changes necessary for an honest election exceeds the legitimate tenure and function of caretaker government sanctioned by the constitution. The government must set the limit finely or its legitimacy will be strained. Its claim to legitimacy is contingent and retrospective, not prior procedural. The book analyzes the current constitutional and political crisis in multi-political cultural and multi-disciplinary perspectives including political practices and philosophy as well as jurisprudence. The main conclusions are that the ultimate sanction of democracy is the people who would retrieve and assert their power if the constitutional actors and the institutions continue to fail.