ACC is creating more problems than solving

ACC is at best turning out to be a premature baby, and at worst, a body set up without the conviction and will that would have given it a force of existence and an inner substance to move forward. It has faced a host of dilemmas after the day one of its inception, the inaugural day having been suffused with fanfare and promise of a break with the past. First of all, there was the long duel between the government and the ACC over the absorption of the now-defunct Anti-corruption Bureau's staff into the ACC. A few months on, the matter still hangs fire. Then there were the chairman and members of the commission pulling in different directions with their views on how to get on with their job.

The latest dilemma facing the ACC is whether it should take up all the 4000 under-trial cases which had been processed earlier on by the now-defunct Bureau of Anti-corruption. The ACC chairman Justice Sultan Hossain Khan has decided to seek legal opinion from the Attorney General on the subject. We wonder, why such an important matter was not resolved by reference to the highest court before constituting the statutory body?

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Now, there is a new twist in the organisational contradictions. The chairman is preparing to send a proposal to the government to appoint 18 army officials to man intelligence and counter-intelligence units on deputation, together with taking on board six officials from revenue departments, five from the police force and three from the judiciary. The chairman is now thinking of taking the proposal to the next ACC meeting. Because, by his own admission, 'there are differences of opinion among us'.

Why the chairman and the two members of the ACC cannot work together, being such a small compact body as they are? This is the fundamental question agitating the public mind. Please get your act together at the top, so that by a contagion effect, the functionaries below you do not fight each other.