Can corruption be ever weeded out in Bangladesh?

Ref: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8106069.stm

On July 29, 2009, the BBC News had a report on corruption in Bangladesh (Corruption Still Haunts Bangladesh). It noted that an entrepreneur who wanted to start an export company last year had to wait more than a year getting the necessary license and had to return to government offices multiple times, each time paying bribe to a different person. What is also worrisome, as pointed out by the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Dhaka, is the mere perception amongst the filthy rich in Bangladesh that they can buy success through corruption, and need not be efficient or honest.
Reports like that in the BBC or elsewhere shouldn’t surprise anyone. Just a look at the Transparency International (TI) corruption perception index between 2004 and 2007 is enough to understand what direction Bangladesh was heading (2008: Ranked 147 out of 180; 2007: Ranked 167 out of 179; 2006: Ranked 156 out of 163; 2005: Ranked 158 out of 158; 2004: Ranked 145 out of 145). Does government have a role in this TI trend? Sure. Is it the only party responsible for corruption? No.
What we have in Bangladesh is a vicious cycle in which corruption begets corruption and creates a society where one is either a giver or taker of bribe – both unlawful (haram) deeds. Very few Bangladeshis can claim to be outside this noxious embrace. Truly, corruption has lost its color and badge in our society where the difference between right and wrong, moral and immoral is increasingly becoming blurred. In our society today, money matters. Thus, many parents would rather have their daughter marry someone who is dishonest and yet makes enough “extra” income (another name for bribe) through corruption.
What this does is something ruinous to any society. Corruption pushes the honest and incorruptible ones (in spite of the doom and gloom environment in Bangladesh, there are plenty of those noble souls in every sector) to feel suffocated as if they don’t belong there and look for opportunities outside the country. And once the door to outside employment or immigration opens up for them, they don’t want to return to Bangladesh. Foreign governments and employers are, however, willing to accept only the best and smartest ones that they can get. It is not difficult to conclude that corruption eventually leads to a brain-drain phenomenon leaving behind a society in which the mediocre and less bright ones rule and run the society. Sycophancy becomes a sure way for upward mobility in job and social status. Crime thrives on corruption, eventually both acting like parasites eat away the fabric of the civic society to a status of no return. Most people in that condition cannot even differentiate the exceptions to the rule from the norms.
This past week a marketing company that is interested about importing chemicals from the USA and Canada to Bangladesh contacted an expatriate. It was for a big supply requiring good product knowledge and selecting the best of the suppliers. When asked WIIFM (what’s in it for me), the buyer said that the agent should try to get kickback from the suppliers, i.e., can't expect any commission from him. He did not understand that what he proposed is illegal in western countries (and very few will cross the line there).
The other day an old cadet college friend of mine who has been involved for the last two decades in poverty alleviation projects through empowering the poor was telling his story of how he failed to bring an EU funded project in 1999 (worth Tk. 200 crore) to the hilly districts of Chittagong simply because the minister in charge (Kalpa Ranjan Chakma) demanded a payment of Tk. 5 crore before he would approve the project helping his own people.
Last week, in a friendly gathering in suburban Philadelphia, a college professor shared his bitter experience about Bangladesh. He was saddened by the fact that many unscrupulous individuals were willing to reward crime. He was upset, and rightly so, that some expatriates living in the USA, eager to own a footprint now in Dhaka, were buying properties from known crooks in the housing sector who had built apartments on illegally grabbed land, simply because their asking price was lower than that offered by a genuine developer. If that be the attitude of our educated professionals, we are probably in a worse mess than perceived by our social scientists! It is sad to see how the demarcating line between halal (lawful) and haram (unlawful) is getting fuzzy and foggy.
In spite of such an exhibition of rotting corpse of moral decadence, probably everything is not lost. Our young generation is seeking a change for the better -- away from the dark days of the past when most of the high-stake government business deals were made not inside the Secretariat but inside the Hawa Bhavan. It is their overwhelming support for the Mahajote (Grand) Alliance that made the big difference in the last election. They voted hoping that the new government would fight corruption, thus changing the ominous perception from a corruption-infested society to one that promised honesty. But will their aspirations for a corruption-free society ever materialize?
It would be unwise to expect miracles so soon. One of the major declared aims of the Hasina administration is to weed out corruption, thus encouraging foreign and local investment, esp. in the private sector, which it hopes will open up more employment opportunities. Mindful of concerns and dreams of the young generations, the Prime Minister has not included any of the old guards in her cabinet. None of the new ministers has yet been accused of any corruption. But fact remains that the government inherits a highly bureaucratic system that is not streamlined in delivering results or resolving issues fast. It is highly inefficient and quite corrupt. Corruption is pervasive, structural, and persistent due, in part, to the high degree of state involvement in the economy and the weakness of the rule of law. A personal experience may shed some light here.
Last February while I was visiting Bangladesh, meeting with some ministers and high ranking government officials responsible for upholding law and order, and weeding out corruption, discussing concerns of the expatriate community, the leader of a land-grabbing crime syndicate (Jaker Chowdhury) was still able to victimize my family. In an earlier court decision, Jaker and nine members of his land-grabbing crime syndicate were found guilty and sentenced to a 6.5-year prison term for unlawfully demolishing nine homes and evicting sixteen tenant families from our Khulshi properties in 2005 (during the BNP rule). (The property has been legally owned and lived by my parents since the 1950s.) However, free on temporary bail, Jaker was able to bribe an unscrupulous (Chittagong metropolitan) Additional Magistrate Asaduzzaman Khan (reportedly paying him Tk. 40,000) to issue an arrest warrant against my father, sister and two brothers-in-law without requiring any police inquiry of the false charges made against them. Advised by a dishonest pleader, Jaker alleged that my father had tried to kill him by squeezing his testicles (and what else is possible for an 83-old man!) around mid-February in our premises! Interestingly, to accentuate the gravity of the crime, he claimed that my father was a man of 52 and my sister of 38 years young. For the last several months, our Khulshi properties have been under Ansar guard. Any person with an iota of intelligence could have seen the serious flaw with the accusation and would have thrown it on the face of the accuser, but not a corrupt magistrate. My father had to come to Dhaka with others, leaving my sick mother (a writer and retired college professor) behind, who needed constant care because of her cervical spondylolisthesis. After months of moving between courts (city to High Court), just last week, we got a quashment from the High Court. It ended up costing us nearly two hundred thousand taka -- just on legal fees alone. For what? To challenge an undeserving warrant, courtesy of a corrupt magistrate!
When I reflect upon the fact that we are, by the grace of the Almighty, financially well off and could handle such false cases, albeit under lots of physical, monetary and mental torture, what chances do our ordinary folks – the Salimuddin and Kalimuddins - have in fighting against criminal syndicates? Nada, zero. Will the government prosecutors ever bring such criminals and corrupt magistrates to justice for harassing law-abiding and peace-loving citizens? I doubt it.
In my meeting with the Law Minister when I asked him if his office could take any action against the corrupt magistrate, he said that because of separation of administration from the legal body of government, his office could not, and advised me that I approach the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It took me nearly a month to just get an appointment with the minister, and I was not prepared to wait another month to see the chief justice, and thus, returned to the USA disappointed. In our meeting with the chief lawyer of the government we were advised to sell off our family properties, which sounded like getting rid of one’s head for a headache problem.
None of these examples should make anyone feel good about looming corruption inside Bangladesh. Knowing the bureaucratic hassles and kickbacks investors have to endure and pay, they simply would shy away from investing in Bangladesh. The accounting procedures in Bangladesh have not been transparent either, allowing corrupt government officials to fatten their own coffers while the state treasure remains empty.
The current Mahajote government ought to redress these issues and make an environment that is investment friendly. It must earn the trust of the people that are sick of corruption by correctly identifying and punishing corrupt government officials. With the appointment of Mr. Golam Rahman, it has energized the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC). It must empower the ACC sufficiently so that the latter could function as the most powerful watchdog against corruption in Bangladesh. All the ACC officers must also be well paid so that in carrying out their tasks they are not themselves corrupted. The corrupting influence of partisans, politicians, student leaders, chatar dal and mastans need to be clamped down.
Crime and corruption have a very caustic effect on everything they touch within the society. Individual citizens have a vital role in weeding out corruption. They can make it or break it. They must know that those who perpetrate injustice and those who tolerate the same are both guilty parties. They can only act as responsible citizens by refusing to be drawn into corruption and also acting as eyes and ears of the society against this vice.
Is there a future for Bangladesh getting out of this mighty mess of immorality and corruption? I don't know but do feel that something ought to be done fast because if we don't, we all become a nation that breeds and sustains a system that is so bad that only those who are buried under the ground are better off than those living on it. But the living ones deserve better!

Comments

  1. Well done. Can we have specific write up on "corruption in administration of justice in Bangladesh" please? Thanks for your efforts. Keep up the good work.

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