The law secretary's apology is not enough
IT is a strange way to begin an inquiry and then to end it. Suranjit Sengupta, chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on law, justice and parliamentary affairs, has informed the nation that the committee will not go any further in investigating the role certain individuals in the power circle played in the recent removal from service of two judges (the judges have since been restored to their positions). And he has based his decision on the ground that the law secretary has already apologised to the committee and has indeed taken upon himself all responsibility for the fiasco.
That is not good enough. It is disappointing for all of us that the committee, after the initial noises (and they were rather loud ones) it made about penalising the men responsible for that bad move, now thinks that everything is back in order. Maybe that is indeed what it is. But the fact remains that the government took a bad mauling on the judges issue. And when the parliamentary committee first decided that three individuals would be called before it to explain their conduct over the making of the controversy, we were pretty impressed with the determined manner in which it seemed to be doing its job.
It was especially exciting because none other than Suranjit Sengupta, decidedly the most significant of legislative veterans we have around these days, was spearheading the move to bring the guilty to account. That parliament was not going to be a plaything on the part of the majority was made clear. That men like H.T. Imam would be called before it and made to answer for their conduct was taken as an indication that democracy in Bangladesh had matured quite a few more inches.
We did not quite feel comfortable when Imam, as a way of getting back at the parliamentary committee for having had the nerve to summon him before it, called a news conference. Now, that was an act as unthinkable as it was bizarre. In a democracy, one of the simplest of rules is that when parliament or a parliamentary committee calls you to account for your actions, you do not argue with it or fight back or retaliate. You simply defer to it and go to it to answer the charges against you or speak in your defence.
From such a perspective, H.T. Imam blundered when he thought he needed to speak to the media about the whole situation. He was angry and upset, which was quite visible. The next day, Sengupta was angrier. He correctly drew the conclusion that Imam's convening of a news conference was wrong. That was enough of an indication for us to believe once again in the principle of the supremacy of parliament. We say that once again because in earlier instances of trying to haul up former speaker Jamiruddin Sircar, former deputy speaker Akhtar Hamid Siddiqui and former chief whip Khondokar Delwar Hossain before it, the Jatiyo Sangsad demonstrated a shocking degree of helplessness about the authority it was able to exert on its members.
The three men have simply looked upon the notices served on them with cavalier disdain. They turned their backs on it. And parliament to this day has been unable to compel them to come before it or before the relevant committee handling their case. Which is a pity.
Which is why, again, the paramount thought in the public mind was that H.T. Imam's appearance before the Sengupta-led committee would set a powerful precedent no one would in future be able to ignore. Now the committee has decided to call it a day. It should not have done that without first letting the nation in on exactly what advice Imam proffered the prime minister and how those two other men helped make the government go red in the face. The law secretary did not advise the prime minister. Why then must we accept his apology, say thank you and pretend that nothing really went wrong?
There are quite a few more points the committee ought to have considered in the course of its inquiry into the judges' removal scandal. If on the advice of an adviser the prime minister could in her turn advise the president of the republic to sack the judges in question, it should have been for the standing committee to summon the prime minister too before it and ask her to explain herself. The reason is obvious: once the head of government has accepted the advice of a functionary in her office, it becomes her responsibility to inform the country of the grounds on which she has transformed the advice into a decision.
Before advising the president to proceed with the job of dismissing the judges, she ought to have probed the implications of the move, of whether or not it strayed into territory that belonged to the Supreme Court. Where the matter is one of the president's acquiescing with the prime minister, a similar question arises: why did the president not know that his removal of the judges would likely spawn an embarrassing constitutional crisis?
Our disappointment is complete. The wrong man has said sorry. Those who made the decision to remove the judges remained out of the ambit of the inquiry. And then the inquiry screeched to a stop. This is hardly the way for democracy to glide to perfection.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.
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