Making sense of the MPs’ Constituency Works

How problematic the constituency activities of our MPs may appear, parliament members' constituency work is considered necessary in all types of representative democracies. Professor Philip Norton of the UK House of Lords has outlined at least seven aspects of the MPs' constituency work. They act as safety valve for the freedom of expression and participation of the people. They act as providers of authentic information on governance and public policies. They also act as local dignitaries, advocates of constituency causes, benefactors or welfare officers for individual constituents, powerful friends and lastly, as promoters of constituency interests. While constituency work may be considered an important public relations tool for the law makers, Bangladesh does not seem to bear the hypothesis. Bangladeshi MPs feature four out of Norton's seven-role-narrative. They mostly have been benefactors for their constituents, powerful friends, advocates and/or promoters of constituency interests. Regrettably they rarely act as representative and participatory safety valve on behalf of the people. They surely are not the providers of information and/or transparency on government activities and policies.

While the benefactor role has declined in significance in advanced parliamentary systems, trends in Bangladesh are the opposite. In line with the clientelist tendencies of our society, MPs vying for infallible loyalty from their constituents would need to earn and maintain their reputation through private charity, benevolence and patronage. They would also need to channel official resources, power and time towards that direction. MPs also need to present themselves as very powerful friends of their constituents. Representing an extremely hierarchical and unequal society, they direly need to appear powerful enough to have necessary connection, access and persuasion at the centre or upper echelon of government that can bring competitive projects, public goods to their constituents and also solve personal, administrative and legal problems of their people. In doing this, they tend to take sides of corrupt political and social allies and development contractors who constitute a strong local power base and control the local units of political parties. While such a naked patronisation of corrupt elements may appear self-defeating from an electoral perspective, elections in Bangladesh have their own problems. Fought mainly on partisan rhetoric and personality cults of the party leaders, MPs do not need to bother much about public opinion as long as their local power bases and party endorsement remain intact.

 Within the parliament, our MPs are more constituency men than law makers and accountability watchers. They almost invariably use their parliamentary tools like ministerial question, draw attention notice, motion and general debate to pursue constituency benefits and mostly shun down their role in democratic accountability, legislative scrutiny and national policy making. Several arguments have been advanced to explain this type of total localisation of national politicians. One such explanation claims that development of intense bi-partisan competition between the AL and BNP in the recent past has reduced the number of 'safe' seats across the country. MPs therefore need to hold their ground strongly ever. Though this may be true for a few strongly favourite local heroes, MPs in general can barely rely on constituency work as an assurance of their re-election. People vote mostly in party line and for the selection of prime minister rather than individual MPs.

It appears that MPs do constituency work not to secure re-election. It is rather to secure re-nomination from the parties. The central leadership in each party "nominates" the candidates for parliamentary polls. Unlike the matured democracies, where constituency units of political parties play a decisive role in candidate selection, local units in Bangladesh simply lack the luxury. It is therefore vital for an incumbent to have a very strong hold over the constituency and the party units therein so that strong leadership contenders do not rise from within the party. They would nurture factionalism within the party and establish an army of loyal workers who would prevent leadership challenge and guard an 'undisputed' authority for them. An aged and long serving MP would install their children or family members to take on the baton. This, of course, is not to say that parties don't change candidates at all. They do. This, however, is not for the emergence of new talent from the grass root. The old ones might have fallen out of favour of the central leaders. His/her political heir may have failed to garner enough hold over the local units.

There is a high command's interest too. Central party leadership needs to compensate the MPs against deprivation of their rightful involvement in national policymaking and parliamentary oversight. In diverting them away from parliament, party leaderships accomplish at least two important goals. First, subjugating and co-opting the autonomously elected local government bodies through political MPs is easier than trying this through administrative and bureaucratic machinery. Secondly, Bangladesh's political environment makes it seriously important that ruling party is not left solely with the administration and police forces to check anti-government mobilisation from grass-root. Alert and powerful MPs at the constituency level make sure that opposition or mass mobilisations do not rise from the root leaving the administration to deal only with the capital – Dhaka.

The writer is Assistant Professor of Law, University of Chittagong & PhD Candidate (Legislative Studies), King's College London