Application of law: Making no exception
A parliamentary panel has recommended that to ensure strict adherence to traffic rules by all, even members of parliament (MPs) and ministers will not enjoy any immunity from the law. The Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Planning Commission, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Leader Oli Ahmed also echoed this view, suggesting further that, to ease congestion on the roads of Dhaka and Chittagong, and to stop haphazard parking of vehicles, the flouters of traffic rules should be made to pay |TK.1000 as fine, regardless if they are MPs or ministers.
The members of the Jatiya Sangsad, who recommended such stringent application of the traffic rules, which would be applicable to all cases of infringement without any exception, deserve plaudits for their boldness. This is very heartening that the elected public representatives of the country have thought of a move that does not differentiate between people in high places and those falling under the category of ordinary mortals.
One, who is from the industrialised West, especially from Western Europe and North America where democracy works in its real spirit, may not find anything great or special in our MPs' recommendation to apply traffic rules to an individual, irrespective of her or his social position. It is an irony, however, that in Bangladesh, context democracy has taken a strange twist. Here, the constitution, though it unequivocally provides that everyone is equal in the eye of law, in different in practice where some, belonging to the privileged section of society, are able to get away with impunity after violating this fundamental principle.
Well, one may not still consider such travesty of law at the hands of the powerful in Bangladesh a unique instance in the world. Who does not know that the privileged section of society enjoy some degree of latitude just about everywhere in the world and are apt at slipping though the loopholes of law, if only by dint of their having money, power and connections. This is in spite of the fact that the constitutions of modern states are written in such a way as to never discriminate among people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds.
However, what is being stressed, in the present case of our parliamentarians' going for such stringent legal measures to punish violators of traffic laws, is that the language of the recommendation uses no general terms, but specifically points out that the lawmakers and the ministers would be equally punishable under the legal provision. That makes the difference. In fact, it is perhaps out of sheer exasperation that the lawmakers have taken upon themselves this seemingly unpleasant task of making the beginning of 'the rule of law' from somewhere. Why not start it from the traffic gridlocks where one can see defiance of the law with careless abandon!
It would be necessary to draw a line between the people whose forte is wealth and the power that flow from it and the elected representatives of the people. The privileged few who owe their power and pelf to their business acumen, or pure inheritance or to any other means fair or foul, have no reason to be very responsible or punctilious in matters of rules and norms, be it on the road or in the office or on any other occasion, social or otherwise. Since money is their only strength, it is only natural that they are loath to go by the rules, for that is tantamount to missing the opportunity of exhibiting their special position in the world. Also, they are not oath-bound to the people to behave in accordance with the norms, or as the law dictates. So, it raises a few of our eyebrows when those impatient swaggering nouveau-riches break a few laws of the road. However, what about those supposedly most responsible and respected citizens, who owe their privilege and power to the people who voted them into their positions? Does it suit them to break the rule of the road, or any law of the land for that matter? Moreover, aren't they the ones who enact the laws that are enshrined in the constitution? Oddly though, it sometimes becomes difficult to tell some of them from the rather snobbish privileged members of society.
Sad to say, the implementers of the law, presently the traffic police, often look the other way when the powerful and the privileged are found ignoring the rules of the road. The reasons for that are also not very hard to understand for neither our law-enforcers, nor the privileged, who are often found running afoul of the law, are angels. This is a well-known fact and is accepted as a fait accompli. Even then, the ordinary people do not readily accept it when the lawmakers are failing to behave responsibly in conformity with the law, for example, when they break traffic rules or fail to pay utility bills.
In fact, in advanced democracies, the public representatives do not enjoy any special favour when it comes to laws of the land. Their ministers, like the common people, have to suffer in the traffic jam or to face the music in default of any non-compliance of the rules.
Now that the parliamentarians themselves have risen to the occasion and elected to make no exception in the application of the traffic rules, we are reassured. As the proverbial charity begins at home, we hope, this bold stance on the part of our lawmakers will go a long way in establishing the rule of law in the country.
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