Editorial
HC spells it out again
High time to discard the SPA now
In what could be interpreted as its strongest signal ever to the executive and the legislature to do away with the Spe-cial Powers Act (SPA), the High Court on Tuesday de-clared the detention of 198 people illegal under what we would term the blackest of black laws. So similar had the cases been in nature that the judges would have given a single verdict in all the writs had the deputy attorney gen-eral not pleaded against it thus sparing the government further embarrassment on this score. The rulings, as we see them, came as a ringing indictment on the SPA and also on the government for the way it has abused the law.
Let us now deal with some facts. Since its enactment in 1974, over nearly three decades now, some 70,000 cases have been filed under the SPA and 99 per cent of these have been thrown out of the court. The judiciary has al-most always found its application "outside the scope of the law and in breach of the fundamental rights of citi-zens". Unfortunately, successive governments have found it convenient to ignore a widespread demand for its abolition; after all, the SPA gave them the long handle to size the opposition leaders and activists up, whenever they wished. So the legacy has gone on.
Since the restoration of democracy in 1991, first the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) government, then the Awami League (AL) administration and now the BNP-led four-party coalition have all gone back on their promises to repeal the law. They have all blatantly used the SPA to serve the partisan ends when in power and deplored it when in the opposition. Strong voices against the law, frequently heard locally and internationally, have simply fallen on deaf ears as successive governments have con-tinued to make use of it with a mischievous abandon.
The cycle should end here and now. The higher judici-ary spelled it out loud and clear, while commenting that the government was issuing random detention orders, ninety per cent of which "are on the basis general dia-ries". The people would surely want to add a few lines to the comment and seek reprieve from the bad name the government is bringing to the nation every day by taking recourse to the law.
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