Editorial
Home Minister Homes in
Home Minister Rafiqul Islam has perhaps brought it under the spotlight for the first time that country's law enforcing agency is ill-equipped to fight the crimes in the financial sector. We thank him for coming out with the truth. It is a problem of expertise as much it is of not having a clarified legal system. The minister with the most tricky portfolio certainly had our fledgling stock market on his mind while making the observation in a seminar Saturday last. Thanks to the manipulative forces, securities market in Bangladesh recently inflated out of proportions before taking a nose-dive much to the anguish of the ordinary people many of whom lost all in an unexamined and unchecked pursuit of their dreams. In this connection we welcome the government plan for setting up an American-style Security Investigation Commission.
Mr. Islam gave the impression of a very focused professional when he detected so-called toll collection or extortion and corruption as the two most powerful eroding factors in our economy besides lack of expertise of the law enforcers. Ten per cent of the GDP goes down the toilet annually because of the dual reign of these two evils. He gave plenty of food for thought to our politicians with the observation that criminal incidences would have gone down by seventy per cent if police did not have to invest its time and energy in tackling movements and chaos. We believe the statistics are enough to convince all concerned about how we are working against the interest of the civil society by keeping an institution, a force created exclusively to maintain law and order in civil society for reasons eminently other than that.
But there is a limit to which police, even if it is allowed to work with the desired freedom, can deliver the goods. What can the men in uniform do abouttadbir or dharna that has turned into a way of life in Bangladesh? From admission into schools to a posting, everything has become dependent on lobbying. Efficient, expert police will make its presence felt only when society evolves into a point where it will automatically ostracise or winnow out the criminals like defaulters and lobbyists.
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