AMIDST the fourteen party alliance's ongoing demand and agitation programs for the fulfillment of the reforms for Caretaker Government and Election Commission, Prime Minister (PM) Begum Khaleda Zia had been holding hectic public meetings throughout the country. Besides bashing her opponents in the said meetings, the BNP chief is also found to be seriously campaigning for support for another term in the office. It may be mentioned here that, within few months, the present government will have to hand over power to a neutral caretaker government to hold general election in 2007. Thus it is quite obvious that a PM (and also the party chief) would move around the country with success stories of her government, along with the offences of her opponents, to win the hearts of the voters. But what surprisingly struck my mind is an appeal by her made to the public. I noticed that her son Mr. Tareq Rahman, the senior-most joint secretary general of the BNP, had also been making the same point in his recent meetings.
Both of them are now appealing to the people to put them to power again so that they could "uproot corruption" from the country. In other words -- as they want to say and I want to interpret -- their fight against corruption would start only after BNP is sent to the citadel of
power for another term of five years. The question is: why their "jihad" against corruption had been shelved for the last four years since voted to power in 2001? All the more important is the fact that, during the 2001 election campaign, as readers could recall, one of the important pledges that BNP made to the public was to uproot corruption from the country. People honoured their words and voted them to power -notwithstanding the alleged modalities of the election held in 2001 -- to see a corruption-free society. But as ill luck would have it, people were allegedly betrayed to witness just the opposite syndrome: corruption continued to creep in and cripple the economy, claiming roughly 2 per cent of our GDP every year. The country has been rated as the most corrupt country of the world for a consecutive run of four years of this government.
Shortage of space would not allow me to tell the telling stories of corruption. Nor shall I resort to the TIB reports, widely publicized, with a view to ventilating the rampant corruptions, rank and file. But allow me to cite two reports headlined by The Daily Star on March 30 that possibly would speak of the level of corruption in the country during the time they are making the appeal to the public. One report says that the Power Development Board (PDB) is to incur colossal loss, about Tk.10
million annually, on buying costly plants: "After pushing the country into a perennial power crisis through inaction and wrong actions in the last four years, the government is making the Power Development Board (PDB) swallow a loss of thousands of crores of taka in the next 15 years by imposing very costly skid-mount projects on it. Price of power from such a plant ranges between Tk.3.10 per kilowatt hour (one unit) at the lowest and an unbelievable Tk.12 per unit. In contrast, the country's existing three power plants of 11 MW production capacity each (now being expanded to over 30MW) offer power at Tk.2.03 per unit." According to the same report, the government is pushing for two dozen skid-mount plants which would generate a total of 450-500 MW power. This process is alleged to be a gross violation of the country's private power policy.
Generally, power plants have a gestation period. From procurement to generation of electricity, it takes few years -- sometimes the total tenure of a government. We came to learn that the demand for transparency by the donors in the procurement processes of power projects stood on the way towards materialization of the projects in due time. The party in power wanted to gift party lobbyists in a non-transparent fashion. As a result of the stalemate
so impinged, the country was thrown into its most acute power crisis ever. Farmers in the northern districts are suffering for want of water caused by power crisis; industries suffer heavily; load shedding jeopardizes human lives in urban areas; and there are other problems created by the crisis. The Hon'ble PM and her followers, of course, dub it as a consequence of the "flood of development" that the country is faced with. Economic development, no doubt, demands more power but a shortage of power in no way means economic development. In fact, one of the important indicators of development is per capita consumption of power. Even if for brevity's sake, PM's perception is taken to be true, then hunger could also turn out be a blessing: it means some people are eating more (flood of eating!) to keep a large number starving!
The other report of the same daily and on the same day, relates to land grabbing. Land grabbers are reported to feast on 1.88 lakh acres of forest land in different parts of the country. The main grabbers are, as reported, politicians, local elite, and businessmen. The Parliamentary Standing Committee is reported to have blasted the concerned ministry for their alleged failure in getting the lands off the forceful occupation. Few years back, we read a newspaper report that the then minister in
charge of the Ministry of Environment spent Tk. 10 million in the wedding of his daughter!
The Daily Jonokantha reported that the one MP from Bakergonj district built a house costing Tk.10 million in his village. He has another residential flat in Dhaka worth Tk. 10 million and business properties worth few more millions. It is now almost a universal perception that most of the ninisters and ruling party MPs, allegedly, amassed huge wealth during the last four years and, as critics would say, there are more to come in the remaining part of the tenure of the government. Our crude calculation shows that roughly 2-3 per cent of our GDP each year have been "hijacked" by the corrupt ministers, MPs, businessmen, and officials. Needless to mention, perhaps, that "Haowa Bhaban" rose to headlines as a source of corruption in the country.
It must, however, be admitted that the government for the first time set up the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) since last year or so. Whether done by the pressure of the donors or whether driven by government's own judicious judgment of containing corruption could, of course, be a matter of debate. But as things went, there seems to be little doubt that ACC came into being to obtain a particular loan from donors and once the loan landed, ACC ceased to operate as
expected. Therefore, it was never an ardent wish of the government to create an independent institution to investigate into corruptions. The ACC is being made almost a nonfunctioning body due to the lack of logistics and other supports.
Therefore, we think, the appeal for another term in the office of the government by the present PM and her son, to uproot corruption from the country, may not attract the people already anguished and angered by rampant corruption in the country. The cost of corruption is mostly borne by the poor segment in the society. And it is the poor who mostly suffered during the last four years of creeping corruption in the country. The power crisis, allegedly caused by corruption, put farmers in perilous position. Prices of sugar, onions, baby food and other essential items soared partly due to corrupt practices of business syndicates. The under ground economy, accounting for roughly one third of the GDP, originates from corruption. By and large, corruption crippled the socio-economic fabric of the society. Corruption now has entered into the hearts of rural areas also.
In this backdrop, faith in the capacity of the present government in wiping out corruption had been fading fast and people might not stake their vote this time in their favour on this issue particularly. It is, however, not to argue that a change of government would do all that is the needful in wiping out corruption but, at least there would loom large hopes for a better future. People live on hopes and like to see changes. That appears to be the lesson of history. The anguished people, given a choice to select candidates freely and fairly, may not respond to the appeal of the PM this time.
Abdul Bayes is Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University.