FOREIGN OBSERVERS IRKED BY GOVERNANCE STYLE Crisis group warns M. Shahidul Islam Effective leadership being the ability to successfully integrate and maximize available resources to obtain targeted goals, those goals can not be achieved unless stability is restored first. Dogged and hammered by a succession of crises since assuming power early this year, the AL-led regime now finds itself in the midst of more intractable challenges which many of the national institutions will fail to help overcome due to deliberate weakening of them by political influence peddling and partisan motivations. Especially nation's military and the police forces undergoing severe upheavals, further instability can hardly be avoided unless the pattern and modalities of governance change sooner. Damning reports Two startling reports go a long way in depicting the exact state of affairs of the nation and its people, viewed from the perspective offered by how the police force, the custodian of law, behaves. The first report is about the ubiquitous and the utterly detestable police immorality and, the second one is about the severe consequences the extent of criminality within the police force has begun to unleash. On December 15, police Sub-Inspector (SI) Mainul Islam of Dhaka city's Adabar police station was caught red-handed while robbing two mobile phone shops in the city's Paltan area. Accompanied by a group of five muggers, including two other police personnel-SI Rowshan Ali of Kotwali police station and constable Saju of the Detective Branch (DB)-the unscrupulous (and dare-devil) law enforcers mugged Taka 16.5 lacs before being caught by pedestrians. The second report, which sketched out the prevailing hopelessness, un-professionalism and the corrupt mind-set of the police force, was released by the AFP news agency only hours before that grisly incident in the heart of the nation's capital. Titled as: "Dire Bangladesh policing threatens democracy," the report quoted the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) for warning in a recently published report that the "dire state of Bangladesh police risks inviting a military takeover of law and order duties." If true, that implies re-arrival of emergency rules, if not martial law, or any disguised version of the same. The ICG remarkably pontificating in its report said that the police force was a "tool to line the pockets of politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen," and that if Hasina's government did not reform the system, the army could step in." Why now? One wonders why this report now when this state of affairs prevailed even when the military was at the helm of the state affairs during the prolonged caretaker interregnum (2007-2008), albeit in much controlled and circumspect manner. For example, on February 11, 2008, three police personnel, including a senior officer (Assistant Commissioner of Panchlaish zone, Abu Saleh Mofazzal Huq, along with Constable Ehsanul Islam and driver Abdur Rouf) were arrested on charge of committing robbery at the house of a Dhaka-based businessman. The robbery was conducted with a pretext to 'conducting search'. Although the caretaker government of the time adopted a virtual zero-tolerance policy to deal with such matters and a published report of July 2009 showed 31,043 police officers of different ranks having been punished for corruption and other delinquent behaviours during 2007-2008, the situation seems to have reverted to square one since the arrival of a political government to power early this year. Hence the concern of this international think tank Then again, one might as well ask was the situation better when the BNP-led alliance government was in power from 2001-2007? Not quite, but the criminality and the delinquency within the police force did not slide as badly then as it did particularly since mid-2009. This is due to lack of proper leadership, supervision and punishment, according to analysts. For instance, in 2002, a total of 19,622 policemen were punished for their involvement in corruption and other criminal activities while another 16,913 faced similar consequences in 2001. That had very positive impact on the discipline of the entire force. Yet, the Transparency International (TI) reported in 2002 that the two most important elements of public security-protection of life and property and the dispensation of justice-suffered badly in Bangladesh due mainly to police corruption. The TI survey revealed that 49.5% of the complaints made by the victims of crimes involved bribing police to do so while 55% of the cases got stopped from moving to the court through similar shady means. Corrupt leadership There is a broader consensus that pervasive corruption within the police force derives its strength, legitimacy and sustenance from corrupt political leadership, and, most of the senior police officers agree. Insisting anonymity, one officer confessed candidly: "We get political pressure in support of the perpetrators of the crimes not to proceed with justice. It eventually ends up with some bakshish in return as we find this as doing favour to the criminals." Juxtaposed with the ICG report, one finds such an assertion containing not only the plausible grains of truth, but the whole truth, and, there are rampant examples to prove it. Recently, police at Sitakunda police station (Chittagong) refused to record a case in connection with the encroachment of four shipbreaking yards by the sons of a ruling Awami League lawmaker, ABM Abul Kashem. Following a series of media exposures relating not only to the encroachment of the shipyards, also to the brutal attacks on journalists when they tried to cover the story, police finally arrested Golam Mostofa and Shahabuddin, two aides of the lawmaker's sons, for having attacked journalists, while the MP's sons remained at large, unfazed, untouched. This culture of 'selective justice' in favour of those in power is what prompts many police officers to indulge into whatever is considered possible to get rich quicker. The rationale is: if the political bosses are corrupt, why not we? Besides, the recently held BNP's convention proved anew that the political parties and the police are impregnable to the needed reform and adaptation, come what may. 'Dire' Bangladesh policing threatens democracy Bangladesh: Getting Police Reform on Trackhttp://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=6427&l=1 |
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