Back in Bangladesh – the face of endemic corruption
I arrived in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka last week via the Emirates
Airlines. The flight from Newark to Dubai was delayed by an hour and the
in-flight service crew were poorly prepared to do their task satisfactorily.
Upon arrival in Dhaka airport, I waited for another hour and a half before I
could collect all my baggage. One of the bags missed a lock; the TSA
(Transportation Security Administration) agents had removed the lock in Newark
airport to check the bag. Nothing fortunately was missing from the bag.
Since the death of my mother some three years ago, I have
been visiting Bangladesh more frequently. This latest visit is planned for a
long stay, almost three months so that I could spend some quality time with my
father. It has become quite difficult for very senior citizens like him to be
cared well, esp. when their children are settled overseas. I, for one, find
myself guilty of the decision I took decades ago to settle in the USA where I
had gone to complete my graduate studies. With hard-earned graduate degrees
from prestigious universities came job offers that were difficult to ignore;
and then with kids born and raised in the USA, the urge to return to my native
country weakened for my wife and me. The political unrest and deteriorating law
and order situation inside Bangladesh have not been favorable either to return
permanently. But still I dream that situation would one day become better
allowing people like me to return and contribute more effectively.
It’s a wet or rainy season this time of the year in
Bangladesh. Since arriving in the port city of Chittagong where my father
lives, I have not stepped out of our home. It has been almost four days, and
yet this time, the jet-lag has really taken toll upon me messing up my sleeping
pattern.
Upon suggestion of my old friends from BUET, I took a train
ride from Uttara Airport station to go to Chittagong. It was a wise decision.
As expected, the train came on time and arrived on time, taking less than five
hours. [By the way, of all the government sectors, the rail system has been
working satisfactorily for years.] One of my nephews – Salman – came to receive
me at the station. It was a short commute from the train station to my father’s
residence in Khulshi. My younger sister, Jessy, who has been living next door,
was absent this time to receive me. She had accompanied her husband for the
latter’s treatment in Chennai, India.
Despite the mushrooming of hospitals and health clinics,
most Bangladeshi patients don’t have a positive perception about the local
doctors and/or the health care system. Thus, those who could afford the extra
expenses would rather have their treatments done outside than inside Bangladesh.
Even for a minor health checkup they would go to places like Singapore,
Thailand and India. It is no accident that many of the health clinics and hospitals
inside India are functioning rather profitably because of such a large
client/patient pool based in neighboring Bangladesh; without these patients
these facilities may had to be shut down. I am, however, told that getting the
Indian Visa for medical treatment is not an easy one, and could be very
frustrating for the patients requiring urgent care. My brother-in-law had to
wait for nearly three weeks before he was issued such a visa. Most patients
would return to see the same doctors, which says a lot about the positive
impression that these Indian doctors have been able to imprint in the minds of
these patients and their loved ones. Thus, there is always such a big queue for
visa applicants to India in Dhaka’s Indian Embassy.
Bangladesh will have its parliamentary election at the end
of the year. Candidates are, thus, very busy these days selling their
credentials and images to the voters. One respectable leader was cited in
Sunday’s newspapers claiming that 97% of the elected MPs are corrupt. I am told
that the actual figure is higher!
Betrayed repeatedly by immoral, corrupt, greedy and selfish
politicians, the Bangladeshi voters have gotten accustomed to their plundering
and robbery, and false promises. They still cast their votes hoping for a better
future, which seems increasingly elusive these days! In her speech to the party
cadre last Saturday on the 69th anniversary of the ruling Awami
League, the party Chairman and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina implored them to
earn the trust of the ordinary people through honesty and hard work.
Sadly, honesty is becoming relative, if not an obsolete term
in Bangladesh. While it still exists amongst mostly a non-tested segment (and
amongst a smaller fraction of the tested segment) within the populace, finding
an honest government officer wielding some power may be quite difficult. This
explains partly why the country of some 160 million has such a poor perception
index from the Transparency
International. In 2017 it ranked 143 – worse than any of the south-Asian
countries with India (ranked 81), Sri Lanka (91) and Pakistan (117).
According to the latest published reports, there are some
3.4 million judicial cases pending in Bangladesh. And thanks to an utterly
corrupt system, this number is growing alarmingly every day. Compounding this
problem is the presence of only 1700 judges throughout the country: meaning, on
the average, every judge will have to review and judge nearly 2000 cases! If no
new cases are to be added, such may take years for a hearing!
As I see it, the judicial problem is aggravated by a very
corrupt system at the local level where magistrates are more prone to be bought
or bribed. Some recent examples may suffice to illustrate the gravity of the
problem. Last month (May 2018), during the month of Ramadan, four family
members were issued two arrest warrants by two corrupt magistrates in the Chittagong
Metropolitan City. Oddly, the issuance of such criminal warrants did not
require any preliminary investigation to verify the veracity of the complaints
of the plaintiff who falsely claimed that he was beaten and extorted money. In
one warrant the main accused person was shown as 42-years old, and his daughter
36; in another warrant, the same person was shown 46-years old and his daughter
36. It did not bother or concern the ‘brilliant first-class’ magistrates to
question: How could a 42- or 46-year old man have a 36-year old daughter? With ‘sweetening’
bribe money, apparently, such big flaws are irrelevant! By the way, the actual
age of the main accused person is 92 and his daughter is 62 years old. By
falsifying their ages, the plaintiff, Md. Shahjahan Chowdhury – a noted
land-grabbing criminal who was previously convicted to 6.5 years prison term
with fines for such crimes (and free now on bail), had tried to influence the
lower magistrate courts to harass the lawful owners of the land. [The accused
is bed-ridden and hardly walks out of his room; his daughter and son-in-law
(the other accused ones) were outside Chittagong when the purported extortion
and beating happened!]
Imagine the trauma faced by the family when the police
knocked on its door at around 10 p.m. in the month of Ramadan when people pray
the Tarawih prayer! Within half an hour, they had to face – not one but two - groups
of police forces bringing such warrants; and it did not matter that the accused
ones were decades older than the cited ages within those warrants! This real
case says a lot about Bangladesh and its failing judicial system, and why those
who have seen better don’t want to return to their native country!
In a society where law and order prevails, such a matter
would have been rare and guilty parties promptly punished; the attorney
general’s office or the public prosecutor’s office would find the plaintiff
guilty of deliberately falsifying the court and creating disorder, and the
corrupt magistrates fined and put behind the bar for their dereliction of duty
and misuse or abuse of the public trust. But such irregularities are norms in
today’s Bangladesh where the criminals have long arms and deep pockets to
terrorize and harass law-abiding ordinary citizens of the country who have no
one to come to their aid to relieve their pains and sufferings. Either they fight
their own cases in a system where they and their grandchildren may never see
the ultimate end of their cases or simply forget their sufferings and try to
move on. In this country, government has failed them and continues to do so, despite
all the promises made by the ruling party and its chairman. I often wonder:
does anyone truly care for the common people!
If the above harassment could happen affecting some of the
most law-abiding, tax-paying citizens who are well-educated and -connected, and
socially known for their philanthropy, truthfulness and uprightness what chance
does an ordinary Salimullah and Kalimullah have to survive in Bangladesh?
Even the ministers and high-ranking government officers are
keenly aware of the caustic effect of systemic corruption that they have either
created or failed to stop. It is not by accident that almost all the ministers
and high-ranking government officials of Bangladesh have their own family
members living outside the country! Many of these individuals have second or
third homes in places like the UK, the USA, Australia, Dubai and Malaysia.
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