The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court has observed that human rights are at stake, corruption is rampant and Parliament is dysfunctional.
The apex court made the observation in its full text of the verdict on Constitution’s 16th Amendment released on Tuesday in which Parliament’s power to remove Supreme Court judges was declared illegal.
The apex court also said that crores of people are deprived of basic health care, crimes are increasing, acute mismanagement in the administration, the life and security utterly becomes unsecured and the law enforcing agencies are unable to tackle the situation.
The court said that the combined result of all this, is a crippled society, a society where good man does not dream of good things at all; but the bad man is all the more restless to grab a few more of bounty.
‘In such a situation, the Executive becomes arrogant and uncontrolled and the bureaucracy will never opt for efficiency,’ the court said.
The court said, ‘Instead of strengthening the judiciary, the Executive is now trying to cripple it and if it happens, there could be disastrous consequences.’
The court said, ‘Even after forty-six years of independence, we have not been able to institutionalise any public institutions.
‘There are no checks and balances, there is no watchdog mechanism at work, thus the people in the position are being indulged into abuse of power and showing audacity of freehand exercise of power,’ the court said.
It said, ‘The state power, which is another dimension of political power, is becoming a monopoly of a few now-a-days and this suicidal tendency of concentration of power is increasing.’
The court said that the greed for power is a like plague, once set in motion it will try to devour everything.
‘Needless to say, this was not at all the aims and vision of our liberation struggle. Our Forefathers fought to establish a democratic state, not to produce any power-monster,’ the court said.
The court said that after independence, those unholy alliances of power-mongers twice reduced the country to a banana Republic, where people were seen as commodity which can be bluffed and compromised at any unworthy cost to legalise their illegitimate exercise of power.
‘Politics is no longer free, it is now highly commercial and money is in the driving seat which controls the course of action and its destination,’ the court said.
The court said that now power, not merit, tends to control all public institutions of the country.
The court said, ‘Irony of the history is that with the unflinching determination and indomitable spirit, we were able to free a country from the clutches of a military superpower but we have been measurably defeated by ourselves in that very free country’.
The court said that before assuming the powers the members of Parliament should have considered as to whether they are capable of dealing with such responsibility.
‘This is what we call ‘institutional virtuosity’ by itself is not enough without ‘individual virtuosity’ and we have to strive for that if we really want to build the Bangabandhu’s dream of ‘Sonar Bangla’,’ the court said.
Source: New Age
