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NEWS analysis : Errors in Bill

Inefficiency evident

Shakhawat Liton
Something unprecedented has happened in the law-making process recently when a parliamentary body recommended drastic changes to a constitutional amendment bill. This is very ominous. Ominous, because it lays bare the callousness with which the cabinet approved the bill and also the inefficiency of those who prepared the draft.
The issue is of vital importance because the bill placed in the House is related not to an ordinary legislation but to constitutional changes.
For the first time in the country's history of constitutional amendment, a parliamentary committee has rejected the entire preamble of the bill that the cabinet okayed. But not only that. The committee has recommended that the House replace it with just a two-line preamble it has prepared. The draft preamble had seven paragraphs.
The parliamentary standing committee on the law ministry has proposed that the House delete the preamble because: (a) it contains inconsistent facts which may create complexity in future; (b) it is conflicting with the preambles of the previous constitutional amendment bills; and (c) it does not support the claim in the bill that it seeks to restore article 96 of the 1972 constitution.
The committee has also refused to endorse the law minister's statement attached to the copies of the bill that seeks to empower the Jatiya Sangsad to impeach Supreme Court judges on grounds of misbehaviour or incapacity. Upon scrutiny, the committee has found inconsistent facts in the minister's statement.
Both the preamble and the statement contain distorted facts about abolishing parliament's power to impeach SC judges and about the
introduction of the chief justice-led Supreme Judicial Council.
This is gross to say the least and the parliamentary committee is rightly surprised, annoyed even. The cabinet, the law minister and his team that made such blunders owe an explanation first and then an apology to the nation. After all, law-making must not be confused with making fun.
None of the previous governments has been in such an embarrassing situation as regards the constitutional amendments brought 15 times already in the last four decades.
But what were the cabinet members thinking when they approved such a flawed bill? Was the draft thoroughly discussed, if at all? Probably not, as a careful examination of the text would have pointed out the blunder. Seen from this angle, one may ask if the cabinet's function is to rubber-stamp anything that is placed before it.
In parliamentary democracy, the cabinet, led by the prime minister, forms the nucleus of government. And as a collective body, it is the cabinet that initiates, formulates and implements the policy of the government.
Therefore, the gross error in the constitutional amendment bill is a collective failure of and insult to the cabinet.