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The white paper fall-out

Government must establish culpability
T is not a lily white white paper-part III we are looking at after all. For, it has stirred up controversy, not without reasons, within days of its release. Who ever heard of creating a scandal in the act of spilling the beans about a previous government's conduct? That to reveal a scandal one has to create a scandal is something novel. The credit for it largely perhaps goes to Haris Chowdhury, political secretary to the Prime Minister and the man who was entrusted with the task of presenting it to the nation.
Where the revelatory appetite went berserk was the naming of five top army generals, both former and serving, in the white paper. Barring former army chief Lt. Gen. (Retd) Mustafizur Rahman, the rest are all serving generals: the present Chief of Army Staff Lt. General Harun-or-Rashid, Major Gen Jiban Kanai Das, Major Gen Nazurl Islam and Major Gen. Masudur Rahman. They appear on the list as recipients of Tk 80 lakh in all allocated against projects during the preceding Awami League rule. The generals had received allocations for projects in their respective hometowns from the Upazila Parishad Development Assistance Fund. The notion of corruption is utterly presumptive, maligning and mischievous, to say the least, in all these cases.
The army headquarters have since explained through a press statement that standard procedures were followed in the utilisation of the allocations and accounting for the same.
Haris Chowdhury has reportedly passed the buck on to the white paper cell adding that come as it did in a 'sealed form' from it he had no inkling of what was in it. Strange, as political secretary with a state ministerial rank and someone especially assigned to make the white paper public he would be totally unaware of any sensitive part of its contents!
There is an impression in the press circles drawn from a question that a Dinkal reporter put to Haris Chowdhury about some name-doctoring in the white paper. If that is true, he cannot plead innocence of what was in the document. Furthermore, the report had been circulated among a number of officials ten days before its release. Yet it appears the Prime Minister was not properly briefed on the subject. A cell wrote the paper and that was the end of it.
A scooping investigation must be ordered by the PM into the whole affair and some people must be held accountable.
Setting aside the question of lack of coordination even in matters of sensitive nature, there is a serious concern over violation of some other principles. To drag the names of the army top brass into any controversy amounts to breaking institutional norms. Discipline being the cornerstone of the national defence organisation such an approach was patently undesirable.
No government or the opposition tires of warning each other that army should not be politicised. But the PM's political secretary played politics with the white paper allowing army generals to be drawn into a controversy.
Moreover, the credibility of the whole process of preparing the white paper has been thrown open to question. White paper is supposed to be the epitome of transparency, because it seeks to clean up the society. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case.
Haris Chowdhury should be asked to explain his conduct and so must be the cell which authored it. They have friends in the government who might try to hedge, even cover things up. But the Prime Minister must not allow that to happen for the sake of her government's credibility. Let us get to the bottom of the whole business and reveal the truth to the people. The responsible must not escape punitive action.