The ‘Eastminster’ Parliament of Ours

Westminster parliamentary system is both a political heritage and a concept. Jurisdictions featuring the Westminster model around the world got it either as a matter of ‘implanted’ colonial legacy (South Asia, for example) or as a system ‘transplanted’ by the settlers of British ancestry (Australia, for example). Conceptually, the system represents an adversarial majoritarian democracy that contrasts the consociational democratic system practiced across Scandinavian Europe. Westminster is a majoritarian system where a bare majority party would control the executive and legislative powers of the republic. Consociational democracies in general rely on a consensual, multiparty coalition and power sharing approach to governance.

A Westminster minority party would make an institutional opposition and a government in waiting. Though the intra-party cohesion within parliament weakens the opposition’s influence over policy making, the very presence of opposition in a standard Westminster parliament keeps the government alert to the pulse of its own backbenchers. Also, sometimes a strategic opposition, instead of an outright one, exploits the exigencies of situations that may require the government to travel beyond party line.

Beyond the pure or near pure Westminster nations, former British colonies in Africa, South East Asia and the Pacific region harness a great popularity for the model. Tailor made through local adaptations and transformations, the systems installed in this region are not purely Westminster, rather something ‘approaching to’ it. In some cases, it is intertwined with some other non-Westminster concepts like federalism (Australia) and local tradition (Papua New Guinea and Fiji), etc. In some other cases, it is overshadowed and infused by hegemonic traits like military authoritarianism (Pakistan), monarchic paternalism (Nepal and Bhutan), developmentalist one-party monopoly (Singapore, Malaysia), and illiberal and dynastic party system (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) etc.

Signapore has radically transformed the model in favour of a developmentalist one-party dominance. Malaysia has installed an absolute dominance of Malay ethnic group through its avowedly Westminster parliamentary and electoral process. The Indian system endured a ‘structural authoritarianism’ of Indian Congress party during its initial years. It is believed that existence of free and fair periodic universal adult suffrage, agrarian land reform, provincial self-governance and military’s subordination to the civilian authorities helped Indian Westminster system survive a very dangerous risk of one-party dominance in the long run.

Pakistan however is not that much lucky. Military’s direct or indirect, but persistent, involvement in politics and absence of even the most elementary democratic practice of periodic electioneering put it in glaring contrast with India and other tainted Westminster models across the Asia. Additional problem of Pakistan lies in the ultra radicalisation of its society in sectarian and religious line which cultivated hierarchy and intolerance over equality and democracy. In 1971, Bangladesh drew upon the familiarity and ease of the revolutionary leadership with the Westminster model. It was strongly felt that the Pakistani civil-military bureaucratic elites did not give the Westminster system a chance there. Also, by the time Bangladesh was independent, India was somewhat successful in consolidating its Westminster model. Unfortunately, Bangladesh would soon fall prey to Pakistani styled military rule, the fall over of which could not be fully recompensed till date.

On a general analysis, issues haunting the Westminster system in Bangladesh are three-fold. First, remembering the checkered history of manipulation at the hands of Pakistani military, Bangladesh opted for a floor crossing bar upon the legislators which halted the intra-party democracy and legislative freedom in parliament.

Second, Bangladesh utterly failed the core Westminster norms of bipartisanship, ministerial responsibility and reception and treatment of parliamentary opposition. While the Westminster system does not triumph the majority by trampling the minority, Bangladesh’s parliamentary system appears a mere imitation of the structure, not the spirit, of the Westminster. Opposition here is always a matter of threat and suspicion and hence subject to manipulation and suppression.

Third, Bangladesh’s devastating state of electioneering puts her in odds even with the illiberal multiparty system of India and the authoritarian one-party systems of Malaysia and Singapore. While the long-held monopoly of Indian Congress party and Malaysian Barisan Nasional party could be curved through the blessings of their consolidated electoral process, current state of electioneering in Bangladesh does not generate much hope in this direction. Considering the use of elections as legitimising tool for Singapore’s People’s Action Party (PAP) dominance, the current state of one-party dominance in Bangladesh may seem travelling towards the Singapore style of transformed Westminster. While the election of 2014 was termed by the UN as an ‘election of polarisation’, the election of 2018 could be called one of monopolisation. Yet, the Singapore analogy loses much of its ground when the internal democracy and non-dynastic leadership structure of People’s Action Party is considered. Bangladesh’s party system barely resembles that of Singapore.

All the unpleasant facts boiled together, our Westminster system essentially turns into a ‘Eastminster’ one.  Coined by Kumarasingham, ‘Eastminster’ refers to an apparently Westminster system that symbolises its institutions but leaves out its attitudes and conventions (H Kumarasingham, A Political Legacy of the British Empire: Power and the Parliamentary System in Post-Colonial India and Sri Lanka, 2013, London).

Bangladesh is a Westminster system only in a very limited sense of having single-member-constituency based majoritarian system and the strongest possible Cabinet domination over the affairs of the parliament. Apart from these, ours is a ‘Eastminster’ so fundamentally different from the West that it rather works for perpetuating an inequity and structural imbalance that effectively forecloses the possibility of redeeming the body politic in near future.

The writer is Doctoral Candidate (Parliament Studies), King’s College London.