At last, anti-graft watchdog Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) has found corruption within its directors. Numerous media outlets carried reports that two directors of the ACC resorted to forgery in obtaining freedom fighter certificates to defer their retirement by a year, bewildering the citizens of the nation.
The commission has already lost its arms to fight, and teeth to bite corrupt individuals in the regimes that have come since 2009, even though it was once powerful during the military-backed interim government. Now, it is gradually being turned into a signboard-holding commission, conducting investigations of opposition party men to harass them, and helping the ruling party men by providing them with clean chits.
This latest discovery within the sacred anti-corruption body signifies the horrible spree of corruption being committed by the administration. Managing freedom fighter certificates is not any mere modest crime, since forging such certificates is tantamount to maligning the sanctity of our freedom fighters.
The anti-graft body made the discovery while investigating its nine officials, including a director general, who does have war hero certificates. The probe was launched on November 2 in the wake of government and media reports that some top bureaucrats had fraudulently secured freedom fighter certificates.
The ACC has completed its investigations of its director, Golam Yahiya, while those of the eight others are still on-going. In the report submitted to the commission late last month, the probe committee recommended that the government revoke Yahiya’s certificate, and drop his name from the gazette.
According to the reports, when Yahiya joined the ACC, he declared that he was not a freedom fighter. But he later secured the certificate without maintaining proper procedures. To evade departmental action, Yahiya resigned the very day the probe was launched. Another ACC director, Abdul Aziz Bhuiyan, submitted a fake Muktijoddha Sangsad certificate to the commission, which bore a countersignature of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Serial numbered 49719, the certificate did not bear an issue date. Sources within the Ministry of Liberation War Affairs said the last certificate issued by the Muktijoddha Sangsad is serial numbered 47931.
Under the rules, Muktijoddha Sangsad certificates must be signed by its secretary general and countersigned by the incumbent prime minister. Interestingly, Hasina was not in the office of the prime minister in 2001.
The ACC is supposed to work towards ensuring transparency and accountability of governance and development works by combating corruption without any intervention from politics. But recent comments made by ACC acting chief Shahabuddin slammed Khaleda and Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) for speaking against the anti-graft body and he personally attacked Khaleda for “shelving corruption” during her last tenure. Earlier in February, the ACC chairmen inaugurated a number of bridges, which raised eyebrows since they also contrasted with the ACC act.
The action of the anti-graft body is seemingly a subservient body of the executive branch of the government, with the sole objective to tag pro-BNP men as corrupt. In the meantime, the ACC also made the controversial move of clearing former health minister Ruhal Haque and AL lawmaker Aslamul Haque of amassing illegal wealth. The ACC also exonerated former communications minister Abul Hossain from the much-controversial Padma Bridge Graft Case with his 17 cohorts.
During the previous regime, the incumbent government had designed the ACC with its party men, aiming to evade any possible investigations made against them. There was an allegation that recruitments in the ACC were made in line with the government’s instruction of injecting ruling party loyalists only. The politicisation of the anti-graft body is sordid enough to sully its reputation, although its officials are also quite mired in corruption.
The corruption revolving around freedom fighter certificates in government jobs will not be suspended in the near future; rather, it is being taken further, as the certificate holders are subjected to undue favours, violating the principles of equality so clearly sketched out in our constitution.
The Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman struggled for nearly all his life against the quota provision in the Pakistani bureaucracy, as the quota was discriminatory.
The ACC should be run following the rules and regulations of the ACC Act, without any fear and favour, to combat the unchecked corruption. It is the ACC’s responsibility to provide a clean chit to that. The prime duty of the ACC is nothing but to ensure constitutional obligation of accountability and transparency.