Editorial
MPs being exceedingly empowered
A blow to the concept of local self-government
IT's all in the government's mind. It makes a plan for giving block-allocations directly to MPs for development activities and then pulls back. The lawmakers are now being given the authority to prepare development projects for their constituencies which would be implemented by the LGRD ministry. To the extent that the funds are channeled to the ministry instead of giving these on a platter to individual MPs, it sounds positive. But just. The question is: why these funds couldn't be placed to the elected local bodies themselves with provisions for oversight by the LGRD ministry or the relevant parliamentary committees, if devolution of authority, as envisaged in the Constitution, had to be respected?
Now, the MPs have the decisive say in making development plans, with the elected local government institutions being completely bypassed. This is patently antithetical to the whole concept of involving elected local bodies in matters of project formulation and implementation as far as the local development projects went.
While on the one hand the government has been voluble with its rhetoric for strengthening local government systems and institutions, on the other it is taking one step after another to weaken the chairmen and members of these bodies vis-à-vis the local MPs. The first step it took to de-autonomise such bodies related to making the MPs advisers to upazila parishads and obliging the upazila chairmen to seek their advice and suggestions as a matter of requirement. Then, bills are said to be on the offing to empower the MPs with advisory roles in city corporations and municipalities. And now comes the MPs' prerogative to prepare local development plans.
We see in all of this a systematic endeavour to empower and pamper the MPs to such an extent that this will leave the local government institutions not only vastly weakened but also largely irrelevant. Furthermore, what benefits can the government derive from sowing the seeds of discord in the working relationship between the two sets of elected public representatives?
These are the conclusions one is constrained to draw in the absence of any provision for parliamentary oversight in each matter of the extra-ordinary powers being vested in the lawmakers. What safeguards are built into the system against corruption, nepotism and other forms of malpractice that are bound to creep in with a free rein gifted to the MPs.
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