[This was published in the Dhaka
Courier on 07 August 2012. Abridge of this was came to light in the Financial
Express under the title ‘Evaluating performance of individual ministers’ on 01
September 2012]
Accurately noting, a Council of
Ministers in a Parliamentary democracy is a combination of senior and junior
members of Parliament of the Majority Party/alliance in Parliament. Sometimes,
few members who are not Members of Parliament are also included for the
reasons, political or otherwise. When a minister holds full responsibility of a
ministry and attends Cabinet meeting regularly from the functional point of
view, he is called a ‘Cabinet Minister’. Rest of the ministers are called
either state ministers or deputy ministers(although there exists another type
of state ministers called ‘State Minister in charge of the Ministry’ who also
attend regular Cabinet meetings but they
are not ‘Cabinet Minister’ in the terminology of Cabinet Minister. The
very sojourn of a member of a Council of Ministers as a statesman--meaning
dealing with the affairs of the government in a state-- starts immediately
after his taking oath administered by the President of the state concerned given
that the oath itself contains the germs and principles of statesmanship
implying to run a ministry efficiently going above parochial, partisan or
vested interests or personal gains, open or secret, near or remote.
In a democratic order when a party
in power expires its stipulated term determined by the length of Parliament
pursuant to the relevant article of the Constitution then, following
dissolution of that Parliament, it passes the key of the government to the
majority party/alliance in the newly constituted Parliament that comes into
being through immediate next elections. This is generally known as transfer of
power from one elected government to another elected government. Truly
speaking, government is an organic whole and functionally it is composed of
three wings namely executive branch, legislative branch and judicial branch.
So, in a broad sense there is actually no change of government in full since
only the two branches of government meet with such changes, one is the executive branch at the top called ‘Council
of Ministers’ and the other entails Members of Parliament in full while
judiciary remains in one piece. Therefore, in plain words change of government
implies (a) change of leadership in the executive branch of government in the
form of a Council of Ministers (bureaucracies, civil or army, continue in their
capacity of being permanent and professional) and (b) change of Members of
Parliament, Speaker, Leader of the Opposition, Chief Whip and Whips as a whole.
In a narrow sense, these changes of the executive and the legislative branches
are called ‘change of government’.
Moreover, when it is said that the
Prime Minister is the Head of Government it denotes the exercises of his/her
overall functions at home and abroad in terms of internal and external
sovereignty along with the power of the executive to appoint the Judges of the
High Court(s) and Supreme Court and allocation of budget thereto. Hence, the
leadership and wheel of a government rest on the council of Ministers.
In
fact, statesmanship/statecrafts in a broad sense denotes art of administration
and management and it includes a vast area of activities, ranging from micro to
macro levels, involving commercial, financial, academic institutions and
executive, legislative and judicial branches of government and so forth and the
person or persons who is or are skilled, efficient and receptive in such art is
or are called statesman or statesmen. In its narrow compact, statesmanship is
linked to the art of administration related to the affairs of state.
There are two locations of
statesmanship related to the affairs of a state. One is from the seat of opposition, which
further entails (a) from the seat of opposition being in Parliament and from
the seat of opposition without being in Parliament and the other is from the
seat of government. Focuses of political science as a discipline and of
politics as a field of political activities while dealing with a government in
a state rotate mainly around the statesmanship of the position and the
opposition(s) in Parliament whether the system is presidential or parliamentary
or mixed one. The ambit of the opposition(s) is narrower than that of the
party/alliance in power since the latter is voted to power for a stipulated
period of time so that it can transform its election pledges into reality. That
is why the role of the Council of Ministers in a government is very important
because on their overall performances and successes rest the balance-sheet of
the achievements of the party/alliance in power. More a party in power is in a
formidable standing in running a government being closer to its electoral
pledges, more plus points it carries to face the immediate next elections after
the dissolution of Parliament. However to suit the very purposes, show and
application of statesmanship of the Council of Ministers both individually and
collectively are conditions precedents. Focus of this write-up here is on the
points linked to the Council of Ministers with a reference to the grand
alliance government led by Sheikh Hasina..
To be fair, a member of Council of
Ministers becomes a statesman when (a) he is in a position to uphold national
interests above partisan or vested pressures and interests (b) he himself
remains clean and transparent in almost all respects including ethical and corruption-free
standing and(c) he can demonstrate and successfully prove his excellence in the
statecraft i.e. in the art of administration. Here comes the question of the
person who is appointed a member of the Council of Ministers. This is a very
important point and the matter should seriously be taken by the Prime Minister
concerned. Because there is lot of instances that incompetent person on
political consideration in the offices of the Council of Ministers are not only
liabilities for the party and the government but also curse for the nation.
Unfortunately, in many cases political consideration is greater than the image
of Council of the Ministers.
It
was held by Dr. Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State and Monarch
of diplomats of his time, that ‘the statesman's duty is to bridge the gap
between his nation's experience and his vision’. To achieve this, she or he
needs to be possessed of some extra-ordinary centripetal power by dint of which
she or he can put himself in a position of teacher of morality, which was
realized long time ago by Aristotle who said, ‘what the statesman is most
anxious is to produce a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely
a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions’. This is also
true that for becoming a statesman of the first water matching circumstances is
a condition precedent. In the words of Theodore Roosevelt, former
President of USA, ‘if there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if
there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had
lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name’. This is mostly
applicable to the case of a Head of Government i.e. Prime Minister under a
parliamentary model. Nonetheless, a member of Council of Ministers from his own
standing may contribute as well.
Looking at the Council of Ministers
led by Sheikh Hasina one cannot be assured enough about the practicing and
nursing of statesmanship, although it carries many a heavy weight taken from AL and alliances. Few of
them such as Motia Chowdhury, Air Vice Marshal AK Khondaker, AMA Muhit, Nurul
Islam Naheed, GM Quader, Dr. Abdur Razzak, Kondaker Mosharaf Hossain, M.A. Mannan in particular have meanwhile placed
themselves at a point of attention and consideration while the others are
grappling seriously in almost all respects. Of them some have been performing
in a pitiable and disappointing manner. Sheikh Hasina herself being a
well-grown stateswoman should be careful of this observable fact. Realistically
speaking, the days of running a ministry sitting in a push, well-decorated and
air-conditioned room in the Secretariat are over. Now a minster needs to visit
the spot, see in his own eyes what exactly are going on, where the loopholes
lie and how the bureaucratic mindset, red-tape and complications make the
targets of the party in power lethargic, and also foil at times.
It is a pledge-bound obligation of a
minster to detect where and how so-called lobbyists, pressure and vested groups
in the name of the party in power make attempts to influence the authorities at
various stages of administration defeating the overall interests of the state
as a whole. It is really encouraging when we see that a member of the Council
of Ministers is attaching due and proper importance to the expected line of
demarcation between a ruling party and the state. It’s a sign of statesmanship
in developed form indeed and passes a clear message again that a member of the
Council of Ministers is always within the realm of golden opportunities to show
and establish his statesmanship if he is truly committed and uncompromising to
do so, if he bravely remains stick to the oath which he has taken before taking
over the office, if he remains cautiously indifferent to favoritism amounting to
preferential treatment (there are two
kinds of favor, one is due favor and the other is undue favor. Therefore, due
favor, not favoritism is at all not ignorable for the sake of justice and
fairness going above lust and immediate gains at the same being indifferent and
reluctant to cronyisms and sycophancies at whatever scales they might be.
And relevantly enough, comes the
name of Obidul Quader, Minister for
Communications and Railways, who has in the meantime within the short span of
the six months of his becoming a minister given birth to a current in the
statecraft and in the politics of Bangladesh as a member of the Council of
Ministers in this regard. Like his old style of politics before becoming a
minister, he is now also showing courage to say what is right or what is wrong.
He does not fell shy of taking a bold stand to confess and recognize his
follies and mistakes without putting forward so-called defensive ambiguous
terms and sentences that are usually being practiced by his colleagues mostly.
He has been able to set before the nation in action that politics or
ministerial portfolio is a responsibility, not an opportunity merely. Following
the principles of statesmanship of the 21st
century, he is
relentlessly making all under him understand that a minister has two chairs one
fixed in the ministry and other moves along with him all the time.
The case of Obaidul Quader is just a
reference in the mode of reality and encouragement with a view to infusing the
current into others in the same fold. Let his colleagues not fell otherwise as
nothing in the write-up goes against any of them and no attempt has been made
here to glorify Obaidul Quader out of the context at all. One may argue that he
is not an angel. In that case logic is that what are the wrongs if he makes
attempts to enlighten himself with all the possible human qualities that are in
a body capable of making him a man leading to statesman--- a valuable asset for
Bangladesh, which we have been longing for--- since the position of a human
being in true sense is higher than that of an angel? Sheikh Hasina deserves to be congratulated on
her giving birth to such promising pieces in line with Obaidul Quader in the
politics of Awami League under her able leadership. But we are also not free from
the view ‘will he continue in the end? Therefore, let us encourage him and
others in line so that our beloved Bangladesh in course of time may
feel free to think that she is also possessed of a multitude of statesmen in
running her council of ministers in an uninterrupted away.
Over a period of time a party can
make a man or woman a leader of the party but to become a national leader he or
she has to go further crossing the four walls of the party. A national leader
is he or she who mostly speaks of the national issues and causes for the
greater interests of the country instead of the party’s for which a national
leader never suffers from a sense of parochial partisan limitations to come
forward and shake hands with the leaders in the opposed camps, if a need
arises. From this standpoint, statesmanship is a developed form of leadership.
Here Hasina should obviously also give thought now to pick up Tofeal Ahmed as a
member of the Council of Ministers. Sheikh Hasina also bear in mind that only
few members of the Council of Ministers have submitted their records of money,
assets and properties to her. Why not all?
Yes, dearth of statesmen in a
political party may be minimized at least for a short while but poverty of
statesmen can hardly be minimized for a long to keep tempo with time, space and
dimension in national, bi-lateral, regional and international perspectives. The
matter tends to be a grave one if the party is a major one but it appears to be
the gravest one when the party carries a tradition of forming government and
sitting in the opposition in Parliament in an alternative course of term.
Anxiously enough, the matter takes the shape of torpedo or cyclone when it is
found that all the political parties in a country suffer mostly from the same
lacking, which cannot but be dubbed as a kind of ‘political sickness’ of the
first water. May Allah bless Bangladesh
and its people so that right people may find right place to stand by and serve
them.
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