Let’s pull up our socks to improve on it
According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2012, Bangladesh slipped 24 points on the graft scale. The CPI surveyed 176 countries this year where the country retained its 13th place from the bottom on prevalence of corruption. It is little consolation to learn that our score was better than that of North Korea, Myanmar and Afghanistan. The first a totalitarian state, the second being a country in transition from an authoritarian state to a democracy while the last being a nation still in the throes of civil war.
Yet, there remains room for improvement, especially when we see a country like Somalia taking giant steps for six years in a row to improve its CPI record and leave Bangladesh behind. Bangladesh scored 26 (from the bottom) whereas the average score across the globe was 46; we managed to scrape through to attain the second position in the worst performance order among the South Asian countries. The sad reality is that the incumbent alliance has failed to deliver on a number of pledges since it took power. The Padma bridge construction debacle refuses to go away; along with a series of high profile scams including one revolving around railway. This is followed by a range of banking scams where Hall-Mark takes the “gold” followed closely by the Destiny group of companies vying to take the “silver”.
Leaving aside scams and other scandals, the government’s move to clip the wings of the anti-graft body has done nothing to improve our track record. With the Anti-Corruption Commission’s powers curbed and ability to go after high profile cases, the issue of delaying the process of making judiciary independent of the executive and indeed toying with the idea of amending the Companies Act to enable the administration to put a government-appointed administrator in any company deemed to be in financial trouble have all colluded together to put Bangladesh’s ranking where it is today. Undoubtedly, corruption in the public sector remains a major hurdle to good governance in Bangladesh. It has emerged as the greatest stumbling block to attaining middle-income status by 2021and threatens to derail Bangladesh’s prospects of becoming the choice destination for foreign direct investment.
We must get our act together to roll back the trend.
Source: The Daily Star
The present government would not agree with the Transparency International’s evaluation. AL supreme leader has excused the crooks and bad guys because they are her bad guys. Even murderers got clemency from a President who could hardly walk and talk. Because, these criminals belonged to his party.