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NEWS ANALYSIS

President's pardon citizens' concern

Syed Badrul Ahsan
President Zillur Rahman has once more exercised his powers under article 49 of the constitution to pardon an individual convicted in a murder case. We understand that the president exercised similar authority when in September last year he pardoned as many as 20 convicted individuals and thereby allowed them to return to life as usual. In terms of precedent, the president has
certainly done nothing wrong. If you remember, during the rule of BNP between 2001 and 2006, the then president created a furore by granting clemency to an individual who had fled to Europe as a way of evading justice. In the end, justice did not catch up with him. He was pardoned. There was outrage in the country. The pardoned man's name was Jintu. Please recall that the then law minister Moudud Ahmed had a hard time explaining the act to the nation. His arguments were unconvincing.
This bad legacy has once again been upheld through a grant of presidential pardon to AHM Biplob, son of the controversial Laxmipur Awami League leader Abu Taher. No one questions the right or power of the president to let convicts go free. The constitution empowers him to limit, commute or do away with judicial convictions. But what does cause deep worries among citizens is the extent to which political partisanship has had a bearing on all instances of presidential pardon in the last decade. All too often — and this happens with all political parties which happen to govern at a given point in time — cases filed earlier are rapidly withdrawn on the ground that they had been politically motivated. That may be true. Again, that may not be true. More to the point, there is always a thin grey line which makes it
essential for a case to be thoroughly reviewed under duly constituted judicial authority before the decision of whether or not it can be dropped or withdrawn is taken. That line of action has, of course, been a missing factor in Bangladesh even as we have loudly and regularly proclaimed our adherence to the rule of law.
Consider the Biplob factor again. The pardoned man, about whom and about whose family copious reports have appeared in the media (you remember the abduction and murder of the Laxmipur BNP politician Nurul Islam at the beginning of this century), stayed on the run for a decade before turning himself in last April. The proper course for the authorities should have been for this person, assuming that he believed the sentence handed down to him had been a travesty of the law, to seek a review of the case. To be sure, in such instances, a convict under death sentence has all the right in the world to ask for presidential pardon. But presidential pardon, mind you, is a prerogative we expect all occupants of the Bangabhaban to exercise most judiciously after thorough considerations of the ramifications of the move. Article 49 of the constitution cannot be treated lightly or in cavalier fashion. In the present instance, the morally proper course should have been for the president to stay
his hand. That he did not, that the pardon has been granted to a man whose links with the ruling party are public knowledge, only undermines the dignify of the presidential office.
Consider too the ill consequences of the pardon on the family of Nurul Islam, on the nation as a whole. With all the systematic flouting of the law going on apace across the country, with individuals and groups all too easily taking the law in their hands, with mobs bludgeoning people to death and the police unwilling or unable to act against such blatant undermining of decency, legality and morality, the presidential clemency to Biplob can only send popular confidence in governance slipping several notches more.
The time is here for a review and reconsideration of the factors that have led to a grant of presidential pardon in the last decade. It is a job the Jatiya Sangsad must do in order for public questions about the advisability or otherwise of recent applications of article 49 to be allayed. The nation needs to return to the rule of law. The presidential pardon to the convicted criminal in Laxmipur is a new hurdle in our journey to that cherished goal. It impedes good governance. It raises legitimate concerns about the damage that may have been done to the sanctity of the office of the president.