Truth about the Truth Commission
CORRUPTION issues have once again came to the spotlight in national politics. The ACC chairman has resigned, and a list of offenders who sought clemency from the Truth and Accountability Commission (TAC) has been published in the media. Neither incident will disappear from the radar of the government or the parliament.
The parliamentary committee on government institutions has asked the former ACC chairman about the activities of the Commission over the last two years. Law Minister Barrister Shafique Ahmed said that the government planned to dismiss public servants who confessed their offences to the TAC.
Both steps will help in, first, unearthing the truth in the corruption cases which are currently being pursued and second, the law minister has the right to investigate the public servants who confessed their wrongdoings.
Allegations have been made that the ACC deliberately implicated some politicians in corruption cases. Of these, some are now members of the 9th parliament. Dr. M. K. Alamgir is an AL nominated MP, and is the chair of the parliamentary committee on government institutions. BNP has only one or two MPs who have corruption cases against them.
Barristers Moudud Ahmed and Jamirudding Sircar won by-elections in Bogra. Moudud has cases against him. When the trials are completed, it will be clear who was right, the ACC or the alleged corrupt politicians.
Publishing of the Truth Commission's list is unprecedented, and is certainly an achievement of the now defunct TAC. 452 corrupt people including 351 public servants sought clemency by surrendering illegal money to the tune of Tk.36 crore, and so far Tk.34 crore have been realised.
Among the offenders, 351 were public servants, 54 were wives of public servants, 25 were businessmen, 2 politicians and 22 were from rest of the community. It is extraordinary that more than 400 people were public servants and their wives. Out of seer curiosity, this author analysed the TAC's list from several angles in order to make some observations, taking the list as a rare source for corruption data out of self-confession.
Among the public servants, close to one-third belong to the engineering profession. There are also significant number from government colleges (principals and lecturers) and the department of lands (sub-registrars). This suggests that almost half of the government servants in question had at least one tertiary degree.
In the sub-continent, corruption in police force and customs department is taken for granted because of their low paid and little education. It appears from the TAC list that corruption in police and customs is a myth. The people with tertiary education appear to be the major offenders.
Each clemency seeker surrendered about Tk 8 lac. This is peanuts compared with the hundreds and thousands of crores allegedly siphoned out by some ministers and businessmen of the former BNP-Jamat government. One wonders why they committed such petty thefts.
The resignation of the chairman of the ACC at this point has certainly provided the honourable minister for law a big challenge. This government cannot appoint a chairman the way the BNP-Jamat regime did in the past. The former law minister Barrister Moudud Ahmed politicised the ACC by appointing at least two commissioners from the folds of the BNP. The challenge for President Zillur Rahman is to put the nation before politics by appointing a person with integrity.
Achieving the PM's vision 2021 depends on the selection of an appropriate chairman for the ACC. At this stage, full control over corrupt public servants is needed. The nation does not want to see, for example, 40% systems loss in power generation and distribution at the time of scarcity. The power engineers must be brought to account to bring down the losses to 10% before this government's term expires.
According to Bangladeshi expatriate engineers, this target will not be difficult to achieve if the corrupt practices can be stopped by the ACC, with full support from the government. The nation simply does not want to see any more clemency offered to the public servants in any shape or form. Leave ACC alone to fix the age-old problem of systems loss.
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