Too much of institutions!

History has come to a single point, where two eras meet. Is the collective more important than the singular?

In between 1991 and 2017, Bangladesh had experimented with innumerable institutions ostensibly to ensure that people live in a democratic, welfare society.

We cannot swear still public entities are functional the way they should be. To make it worse, only the powerful have become more powerful, leaving all the common men unguarded.

As witness to the 1990-1991 transition, we have been sick of talk about building institutions to promote democratic spirit.

Restoration of parliamentary form of government, independence of the mass media, separation of the judiciary, constitution of oversight bodies, and framing of new laws, rules and policies were all certainly justified demands of the time.

However, with hindsight, some of us regret there was excessive emphasis on the establishment for upholding public rights, rather than building citizens for guarding them against possible onslaught from none but the state's rulers.

In 1990, we got rid of individual autocrat Ershad by stigmatising him in contemporary history only to witness his reemergence in guise and disguise in the subsequent decades.

The key national demand, orchestrated by the opposition forces, was 'a fair election under a neutral caretaker government'. Twenty seven years later, the demand from the opposition remains the same!

In place of HM Ershad and his presidential system, we have found an all-powerful prime minister who is simultaneously the leader of the Jatiya Sangsad (national assembly) as ruling party chief, the head of the executive branch and de facto guardian of the judiciary by dint of the constitutional power to advise the head of the state.

So, holding participatory elections depends on the whim of one person at the helm of all these hypothetically democratic organs.

The heads of constitutional bodies, too, make sure quite religiously that they are subservient to the incumbent, not to any 'vague' entity, to which they are not accountable.

The election commission, for instance, has been given certain authority, at least on paper, but the stakeholders hardly show confidence in it.

The commission did not also prove it independently acts to hold acceptable polls unless the government in office wanted it. It has no scope either to arrange elections without engaging officers of the administration headed by the chief executive.

Enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings have increased beyond wild imagination when the country has a National Human Rights Commission.

Even the Public Service Commission (PSC) is scared of question paper leaks when the teachers are solely blamed by the education minister for the leaks of question papers of public examinations.

The office of the Comptroller and Auditor General could not earn the people's respect by its actions when misuse of public money has taken an alarming turn.

The Bangladesh Bank boasts of swelling foreign exchange reserves although the money is digitally stolen and the banking sector is in a shambles.

The Anti-Corruption Commission is yet to create any impression that it catches big fish engaged in corrupt practice at the moment.

And are there too many public institutions that have not been ruined in the past decade or so?

Supposedly for correcting errors in functioning of the three branches of the state, we have, as the fourth estate, much more newspapers and television channels operating nowadays than in the 1980s. But most of them have excused themselves from truth-telling venture on the plea of surveillance by the state agencies.

Leaders of professional bodies, who once joined movement for democracy, are seriously dedicated to sycophancy while pursuing personal and group interests.

Protagonists of the establishment often keep their full trust in information technology - mobile phones in particular - as panacea for ills in official activities, ignoring that human beings have a role to play in making officials accountable.

During the Ershad regime, the voice of the majority was somehow heard in the silence imposed by the administration. But in the noise of today’s social media, almost all roads to empowerment of the masses have been shut successfully.

The people who aspired to see they are represented by institutions have been pushed back to nowhere. A few who are expected to represent the most and lead relevant institutions, failed to garner courage to act properly.

Thus, we have proved wrong the analogy that a party is greater than a person and the country than a party.

When collective rights and interests are sacrificed for personal gains and arrogance, an individual has no safe standing in society. Such a process nurtures only one man or woman who is accidentally or incidentally placed on top of everything, at the cost of every other individual.

* Khawaza Main Uddin is a journalist