Mysterious goings-on or mischief afoot?
STRANGE goings-on are abroad in the land. Things we thought would not come to pass in this country after everything that happened in the two years of the caretaker government are now truly beginning to happen. Think of the predicament Hasan Mashshud Chowdhury finds himself in. A thoroughly decent man, one noted for his moral integrity, the former chief of the Anti-Corruption Commission is today the target, together with the organisation he has just left, of lawmakers' ire. That is a pity. Where once we thought the ACC would come to be recognised as an intellectually credible watchdog over men and women not much given to morality, today we are within sight of conditions where men pursuing the corrupt are themselves on the run. Or could be on the run.
You see the makings of a serious constitutional issue here. To what extent Parliament, or a parliamentary committee, has jurisdiction over individuals and organisations in the sense that it can summon them before it is a question that needs resolving. The acting chairman of the ACC, his colleague and the former secretary of the body have argued that they are answerable to the president of the Republic. They may have a point here, on the strength of the argument that the ACC is an independent organisation.
But consider this: in a parliamentary form of government, how much does it matter that the ACC, or for that matter any other organisation, is responsible to a head of state whose functions are fundamentally titular? That is again a serious question, one that the members of the parliamentary Public Undertakings Committee (PUC) will certainly have fallen back on in their attempt to haul the ACC before them. But then comes this other question: the chairman of the committee being an aggrieved individual, one who feels he was hounded by the ACC in the past two years, to what extent can the anti-corruption body expect fair play, or call it justice, from the PUC?
You move on then to other questions. Parliamentary sovereignty being a given, it is acknowledged that the Jatiyo Sangsad will be the focus of all political, economic and social activities in the country. Even so, if the precedent of Parliament or one of its bodies summoning a statutory body before it is set into motion, to what degree will it cause scratches on Bangladesh's democratic body politic? Let us not even try to think about it. But, then again, will a parliamentary committee in future confer upon itself the power to serve a summons on the Election Commission? Can judges be required to depose before Parliament? These are intriguing questions and may never have to be answered. And yet, who knows what may yet be?
Move away from this squabble between the PUC and the ACC. And move on to other and certainly undignified images of society today. When the chief of staff of the army, surely the most potent symbol of all this drive against corruption in the recently concluded caretaker times, is spotted sharing the dais and therefore the spotlight with a man who has been on the run from the law on charges of grave misdemeanour, you ask if a terminal malaise has not set in, has not been worming its way into our governance as a whole.
Fugitives from justice are to be pursued, relentlessly. And when they sneak back into the country, it is the job of the law enforcers to take them to where they belong, in this case prison. So what was this individual doing in the company of the army chief and a once-reputed football player? Questions like these haunt us today, in these times we thought would take us to a high moral ground of justice and decency.
And then comes the tale of other men not particularly noted for their probity and yet creeping back to respectability. You know, we all know, how these men have played truant with the economy through defaulting on bank loans and the like. And yet these are the very men who are today spotted strutting all across the corridors of power or of the powerful, as the case may be.
At a seminar on the nation's foreign policy, where you have a respectable former diplomat presiding, where none other than Foreign Minister Dipu Moni graces the occasion with her presence, the sight of men we had thought would be images of our unsavoury past is dispiriting. And so we ask if the spirit of democracy has not been given a rude shake at a time when change is the principle on which this elected government has promised to conduct its business.
Mysterious are the ways of the Lord. Or put it another way. Mischief may be afoot in the land. Why else would perfectly unqualified men be looking forward to coming by places at the Public Service Commission?
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