Our politics and our disappointment
THE government has just informed us that the deadline for applications regarding a withdrawal of what it calls politically motivated cases has passed. And then there is President Zillur Rahman asking the new chief of the Anti-Corruption Commission not to compromise over the matter of penalising the corrupt.
The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party has cheerfully kept itself away from Parliament but has lost little opportunity of making itself heard on all those ubiquitous talk shows on all those television channels. The former speaker of the Jatiyo Sangsad, along with his friends, is yet to make his appearance before the parliamentary committee that has charged him and those friends with corruption in their days in the sun.
These are but a few instances of how our disappointment with politics seems to be going up in leaps and bounds. You almost feel that all the good work of the two years of the caretaker government (and that is quite at variance with the bad deeds committed by that self-same government) is now about to be set at naught.
Remind yourself of all the decency, all the adherence to the rule of law, all that renewed faith in politics you looked forward to as the Fakhruddin Ahmed administration moved into the business of setting things back in order. You cheered the campaign against the corrupt. You were happy that the elements of manifest evil had taken to the bushes and quite clearly imagined that they would never return.
Now, it seems, we are about to make a brisk, happy return to the days when democracy was made unworkable, Parliament turned comatose and government was but cavalier behaviour on the part of those who constituted it.
Take that small matter of the withdrawal of the cases. The first question you ask here is why or under what aspect of modern politics or under which point of rule of law a government is entitled to withdraw cases filed against individuals by its predecessor. Should that not be a matter best left to the judiciary to handle? Of course, an easy way for the government to withdraw those cases (approval has already been granted for 174 such cases to be retrieved from the police files and what have you and binned) would be not to proceed with them. But why should that happen?
Besides, if you have had occasion to keep track of things, you might have noticed that it is only those in the ruling Awami League, or affiliated to it, who are deriving advantages from this withdrawal syndrome. The opposition has remained outside all this intensity of withdrawal excitement, which again is not a cheering sign. How do you ignore the feeling, or how can you, that when comes its time today's opposition will not go into the business of taking out all the cases that were filed against its leading lights and sundry other individuals?
We are setting a bad precedent here, in two ways. The first is in assuming that the executive branch can do what the judiciary should be doing, and thereby blurring the clear, fine distinction between the two organs of state. And the second is to arrogate to ourselves the right and the power to exonerate ourselves from difficult situations only because we happen to be in political control of the state.
And now move on to that presidential emphasis on a purposeful Anti-Corruption Commission. The ACC was doing a fine job with Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury at its head. He should have been asked to stay on. He was not; and when he moved out of his own volition and a minister of state as well as other politicians could not conceal their glee at his departure, we knew the ACC was not going to be the same any more. For starters, where Chowdhury exercised ministerial rank and authority, his successor was informed that he would enjoy the powers of a secretary to the government.
Again, with all this withdrawal of cases going on, how much of real authority do you think the ACC will in the end be able to exercise over the next five years? Things are not looking up. With some people mulling ways of clipping the wings of the Election Commission, with the upazilas being overwhelmed by the presence of lawmakers, you do not any more see the silver lining in the clouds you spotted in caretaker times.
It is morbidity all around you. The opposition BNP, having lost power, has chosen not to move out of its bad old ways but to make sure democratic politics does not function. It comes up with excuses, one after the other, to make the argument that it is the ruling alliance that has been shutting the door to our collective future. All defeated politicians and parties go for soul-searching at the end of the battering at the ballot box. The BNP has proved to be an exception to the rule. And there lies the pity of it all.
And pity turns to moral outrage when you remember that the home ministry is as good as a lost cause. The minister is on medical leave in Singapore. The minister of state, on family leave in the United States, has not deigned to inform the country when, if at all, he will come back to his desk.
It's all so sad!
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star.
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