Killing the messenger:: New Age Xtra

This article was originally published in New Age Xtra on December 31, 2010

Killing the messenger

Syed Tashfin Chowdhury finds out why the government reaction to a Transparency International, Bangladesh (TIB) survey report is undemocratic, paranoid and contradictory to its election pledges

The government’s reactions, following the publication of Transparency International, Bangladesh (TIB) report titled ‘Corruption in Service Sector: National Household Survey 2010’ on December 23, is being perceived as ‘paranoid’ and ‘harmful to democracy’ by many observers. The government is being over-reactive about the findings of a report, which basically mentions that, although corruption is the highest in judiciary, it is also prevalent in other service sectors, they say.

Many acclaimed think-tanks feel that the denial of corruption in judiciary by certain ministers and government officials contradicts the election manifesto of Bangladesh Awami League during the ninth national parliamentary elections, where the current ruling party had pledged to curb corruption, making it the second of five priority pledges.

TIB trustee Professor Muzaffer Ahmad on December 26 felt that the government was being ‘paranoid’ and are ‘harassing’ TIB officials following the unveiling of the report. Sultana Kamal, a former adviser to the caretaker government, Executive director of Ain O Shalish Kendra and the TIB trustee treasurer, said that the government was ‘not being open-minded and thus creating embarrassing situations’.

The two were basically talking about the onslaught against TIB that was initiated ever since the report was unveiled on December 23.

Immediately after the report findings were published in the dailies, the law, justice and parliamentary affairs minister Shafique Ahmed, according to a report published in New Age on December 26, termed the household survey report as ‘damaging for a democratic system.’ He also questioned the methodology of the survey.

On the other hand, Quamrul Islam, state minister for law, was quoted as opining, according to an English daily, ‘the TIB report's aim was to hinder the trial of the 1971 war criminals.’ Similar outbursts also came from the industries minister Dilip Barua, Police Commissioner Benazir Ahmed, other police officials and some ruling party leaders who termed the TIB report ‘baseless’.

However, the worst was yet to come.

A Comilla court on the morning of December 26 issued warrants for the arrest of TIB trust chairman M Hafizuddin Khan, executive director Iftekharuzzaman and senior research fellow Wahid Alam for maligning judiciary and legal practitioners by its household survey report released on December 23. However, the cases were rejected in the evening as the plaintiff failed to submit their addresses properly.

Also, two Chittagong courts summoned the three top officials of the TIB in connection with defamation cases filed on the same day. Chittagong Metropolitan Magistrate Mahbubur Rahman summoned the three TIB officials to appear in court on January 13 in the defamation case filed by Mohammad Mahiuddin while senior judicial magistrate Keshob Chandra Roy passed orders for the same officials to appear in court on January 30 in the case filed by Mujibul Haque.

Furthermore, a group of Bangladesh Chhatra League and Juba League activists reportedly thronged the TIB office in Jhenaidah, demanding survey documents which portrayed the judiciary as the most corrupt service sector in the country.

Sultana Kamal terms the whole situation as ‘an embarrassing moment for democracy’. ‘Issuance of warrants and fines cannot suppress the truth,’ she says to New Age, before pointing out that such activities portray that the judiciary is controlled by the government, and therefore it is taking the government’s side.

‘Those who filed the cases against TIB officials are in no way benefiting the nation. Moreover, it would have been best for the nation if the government accepted the criticisms with an open mind and did what is necessary to curb the corruption,’ she says.

Muzaffer feels that everyone has a right to information. ‘The TIB uses the same methodology that the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics uses and the report, therefore, should not be questioned,’ he adds.

Following the summons, TIB executive director Iftekharuzzaman said to New Age that as law-abiding citizens, they would face all the matters legally. ‘The TIB is fully confident of the credibility of the report as established methodology was used for the survey,’ he said to New Age.

The Berlin-based international corruption watchdog’s Bangladesh chapter conducted five national household surveys from 1997 till date. The national household survey 2010 observes that 84.2 per cent of the households of Bangladesh who had interacted with one or more of different public and private service sectors or institutions have been victims of corruption in one way or the other.

The report found that, of the surveyed, 88 per cent of the people who had interacted with the judiciary were victims of corruption. This is the highest followed by law enforcement agencies at 79.7 per cent, land administration at 71.2 per cent and taxation and customs at 51.3 per cent.

Also included in the report are the situation in the education, health, local government, agriculture, land administration, electricity, income tax, VAT and excise, banking, insurance and NGO.

‘In terms of collection of bribery alone, the law enforcement agencies were at the top as 68.1 per cent of those who had interacted with such agencies were victims, followed by land administration (67 per cent), judiciary (59.9 per cent) and tax and customs (43.9 per cent),’ reads the preface of the report.

The report also estimated that a sum of 95,916 million takas is lost annually to bribery or unauthorised payments.

The report further mentions the various forms of corruption in the various sectors. For example, in the judiciary, the corruption and irregularities include bribery, harassment by lawyer, unnecessary delay, harassment by court staff, harassment by lawyer’s assistants, harassment to draw documents, harassment by brokers and others.

In the law enforcing agencies, corruption and irregularities include forced bribery, involvement in false cases, negligence or delay in filing General Diary or First Information Reports, misbehaviour/extortion, not arresting the accused, torture under remand, not submitting charge sheet on time or in proper manner and others.

Professor Muzaffer refers to the three cases against the top TIB officials as the ‘government’s weapon’. ‘The report is based on the daily experiences of the people. If our findings are unacceptable, then the general public will definitely reject it,’ he says, before urging the ministers and government officials, who have called the survey findings ‘misleading’, to conduct their own survey to find the truth.

Although Barrister Rafiq-ul Haque feels that TIB’s findings were a bit ‘generalised’ about the judiciary, he also does not find much base in the government official’s claims regarding judiciary and law enforcement agencies’ integrity.

 ‘Such views about the judiciary is serious and can lead to the situation where people may lose confidence in the system,’ says Haque. ‘One cannot make such comments based on the opinions of two to three thousand people,’ he says, while mentioning that the portion of respondents could have been more significant like one to two crores out of the total population of 16 crores. ‘Also, the survey did not mention the sectors these respondents are hailing from,’ he adds.

‘Then again, the government’s perspective is being extremely reactive as, that there are some elements within the judiciary, which are involved in corruption, is nothing new,’ says Haque.

Dr Badiul Alam Majumder, Secretary of Shushashoner Jonno Nagorik (Citizens for good governance) or Sujon clarifies that there is no methodological flaw in the survey. ‘Through the report, factual information is being provided. These are information that is already known to most of us. Even the Chief Justice himself had talked about corruption in the lower courts recently,’ he says.

Like Majumder, Kamal also referred to the same instance when the Chief Justice ABM Khairul Haque questioned the integrity of subordinate judges accusing some district judges of taking bribes through court personnel, during a conference of over 150 district judges at the judges’ lounge at the Supreme Court on November 12.

New Age published a report on the event, where Chief Justice Khairul Haque was quoted as saying, ‘the people are not satisfied with the activities and integrity of judges who are now in the dock of people’s court. There is a tremendous backlog of cases and justice is delayed….’

Furthermore, accusing the judges of taking money through court personnel, he said, ‘I have information that some district judges take money through ‘nazirs’ and there are specific allegations against many of you (district judges) present here.’

‘There are allegations that many district judges, when they are transferred, ask the court personnel to give them freezers instead of the Quran and walking sticks as farewell gifts..’ Asking the district judges to change such attitudes, he said, ‘do not take toll from nazirs.’

‘The government did not react in the same manner when the CJ said this. Why then is there such protests against survey findings?’ asks Alam. ‘The government should have initiated a process right then to curb corruption in the judiciary,’ says Kamal.

Others feel that the government is actually drifting from the course it had taken when it was in the opposition.

Professor Muzaffer recalled that the same ruling party which had once hailed TIB reports during the BNP government’s five-year rule, are now against such reports.

‘Most government officials denied that there is corruption in the judiciary following the publication of the report,’ says Dr Akbar Ali Khan, former chairman of Regulatory Reforms Commission and a former advisor to the caretaker government, to Xtra. ‘However, corruption and its reduction were mentioned in the election manifesto of the AL,’ he says.

‘Curbing corruption was the second of the top five priorities mentioned in the Awami League election manifesto,’ says Alam.

‘Multi-pronged measures to fight corruption will be taken. Powerful people will need to submit wealth statements every year. Strict measures will be taken to eliminate bribery, extortion, rent-seeking and corruption,’ reads the AL election manifesto that was released by AL on December 12, 2008 prior to the election.

‘However, we have already seen that there has been little effort to strengthen the Anti-Corruption Commission. And now the government is dedicating its efforts to stop fact-finding reports that can actually help them determine the flaws in the system and correct these,’ says Alam.

Earlier, TI in its report on ‘Global Corruption Barometer 2010,’ launched on December 9, ranked the police administration as the most corrupt public service institution in Bangladesh.

From the total number of people surveyed in the report, 79 per cent of Bangladeshis believe that the police were the most corrupt institution followed by the public service (68 per cent), political party (58 per cent), the judiciary (43 per cent) and the parliament (32 per cent).

Following that report, the ACC Chairman Golam Rahman had told New Age, published in a report on December 11, that the commission now cannot work to curb institutional corruption because of lack of manpower and expertise. He further mentioned that the commission is waiting for the proposed amendment to the Anti-Corruption Commission Act.

At the time, the law minister Shafique Ahmed differed with Rahman when he said, ‘as corruption is not institutional corruption because individuals in the institutions are engaged in such corruption, the commission should not have any legal barrier to dealing with them.’

However, the Inspector General of Police Hasan Mahmud Chowdhury expressed his reservations on the same day about the report while speaking at the annual general meeting of retired police officers’ welfare association at the Rajarbagh Police Line.

He questioned the methodology of the survey as the report findings were based on only 1,049 people. He did not feel that the number of respondents were enough to evaluate a large institution like the police.

Further mentioning that the TIB report did not mention any achievement of police, Chowdhury said that though the police personnel were not above corruption, the police as an institution would not take the responsibility of irregularities of some of its members.

‘Such a mindset is unfortunate,’ says Alam. ‘Back in the old days, when a messenger returned from the battlefield to inform the ruler about some loss or defeat, the ruler usually had the messenger killed. The situation in Bangladesh now is akin to this,’ he reasons.

Alam feels ‘rather than trying to kill the messenger, the government should focus on the message,’ in this case the information, and act upon it.

‘Overreaction to such report findings will be harmful for the nation locally and internationally,’ says Khan. ‘While we can already understand the local scenario, the impression of our nation may be tarnished internationally as we may be labelled as a nation that cannot take criticism properly,’ he adds.

Khan further mentions that the survey was not meant to insult anyone in particular. ‘The government could have used it to discuss the situation with the civil society and take decisions about the feasible ways through which the situation can be tackled,’ he says, adding that such a measure would have been in line with the election pledges.

‘The government should take concrete steps against corruption as soon as possible,’ concludes Alam.