AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

 (FOR PUBLICATION ON SUNDAY THE 11^TH FEBRUARY 2007)

By Kazi Anwarul Masud (former Secretary and ambassador)

Bangladeshis have generally demonstrated an extremely high tolerance level regarding aberrant behavior of politicians. Perhaps being doomed to a life long economic existence that economist Manuel Castells would describe as “misery”, Bangladeshis usually turn to God who in His inscrutable way often seemingly sends confusing signals not easily understood by mere mortals or to the politicians who by and large are engaged in conducting public affairs for private gains. While almost always the people have been taking right decision at the polls at critical moments of our history; the political leaders once elected to office often betrayed them . Politics devoid of morality, driven by endless greed, imprisoned by misinterpretation of the constitution by the people in power for furtherance of their selfish aims and unreasonable ambition, and bent upon hijacking the will of the people have brought the Bangladeshis to a situation that would encourage many to embrace Henry David Thoreau’s reluctance to surrender all powers to those elected because of  merit one can find in the observation of Edmund Burke that sometimes the majority of  elected officials are capable of exercising the most cruel oppression on the minority, and of the possibility of the democratically elected people  to transform itself into Plato’s Plutocracy or the rule by the rich. In such a situation the adoption of the principles embedded in the doctrine of preemption and humanitarian intervention, not by foreign forces but through actions taken by domestic popular forces, becomes urgently necessary. When those elected to deliver political and social goods to the people became engaged in  unbridled corruption and abuse of power they had to be bounded for the sake of saving the people of Bangladesh from an inevitable disaster that a fraudulent election would have brought about. In the present case the legitimacy of the CTG is compared to, for example, the one enjoyed by Malcolm Fraser’s interim government in Australia following the dismissal of Gough Whitlam Labor government by the then Governor General in 1975 as the Whitlam government appeared to have lost trust of the majority of the people.

Bangladesh is counted among the poorest countries of the world where most of the people are unable to provide for minimum standard of living. The condition of abject poverty was enormously compounded by unlimited kleptocracy practiced by the immediate past government earning for the country the title of being the most corrupt nation on earth for four successive times. 

  In Marxian analysis poverty stricken great majority of people have nothing to sell but themselves as opposed to the wealth of the few that increases constantly. Inevitably the process of accumulation of wealth is corruption-ridden. Yves Menay ascribed four invariant characteristics of corruption; - (a) violation of social rules and norms; (b) secret exchange among political, social and economic markets; (c) illegal access given to individuals and groups to the process of political and administrative decision making; and (d) resultant tangible benefits to the parties involved in the transaction. By any definition corruption is illegal and in the first instance results from collusion between political and money elites—the first party abuses public position of trust for private gains of both parties.

 One of the World Bank officials who had served in Bangladesh was candid enough to publicly point out that the “system loss” in power sector resulted from collusive theft by the employees of the sector and the consumers; port inefficiencies cost over $ one billion a year; governance problem and inefficiency in the banking sector slowed down GDP growth over one percent per anum; and, Taka 30-40 crores of public procurement lost every year due to corruption. Giving a detailed analysis the official had concluded that Bangladesh was losing 2-3% GDP growth a year due to corruption.  He added that countries with poor governance that included corruption grew more slowly than countries with honest and accountable government.

 Unfortunately the return of democracy in Bangladesh in the 1990s saw no effective steps taken to control corruption. It is well known that Transparency International, Business International, Political Risk Services and the World Economic Forum have consistently labeled Bangladesh as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. The World Bank has found a formula to describe corruption: C=M=D-A-S where C stands for corruption, M for monopoly, D for discretion, A for accountability and S for salary. Thus corruption tends to flourish where poorly paid public officials have a lot of discretion to perform monopoly functions with very little accountability. Aminur Rahman, Gregory Kishunko and Kapil Kapoor prepared a background paper for a World Bank report on corruption in Bangladesh in which they agreed with Gunar Myrdal that “speed Money”(money paid to speed up administrative decisions) not only distorts the mechanism of efficient allocation of resources through the establishment of perverse patron-client relationship between bureaucracy and the private sector but also encourages corrupt officials to delay the process of decision making in anticipation of more bribes thus effectively practicing blackmail. They argue that corruption also diverts foreign investment from sectors like health and education to infrastructure because the scope of corruption in the latter area is more. In any case as successive World Bank officials and donor representatives have pointed out time and again pervasive corruption in Bangladesh reduces the flow of foreign investment.      The GDP loss should be seen in the context of global interpersonal inequality in which the rich is getting richer and the poor is getting poorer.  Bangladesh ha s failed to get the benefit of the Millennium Challenge Account amounting to 100 crores of takas due to pervasive corruption by the Alliance government.  Given the zero tolerance of the donors regarding corruption corrupt governance in Bangladesh had given the country an image of moral desolation and as an Antarctica of freedom.

One hopes that the steps currently being taken by the Care Taker Government by arresting the rich and the powerful allegedly guilty of corruption and misuse of power would have their days in the court and those found to have abused public trust would be duly punished. Among many other countries South Korea has given the world several examples where even the President of the Republic was brought to justice. Let the steps taken not be a charade nor should they be an eyewash to befool the people once again.