Is the anti-corruption drive merely a smokescreen?

From the looks of the news headlines over the past few days it seems that Bangladesh’s mango season has been overshadowed by the season to reveal all scams and scandals. These are mostly corruption-related scandals. Many of us are gasping in shock at corruption details of senior, mid and lower level officers and employees, starting from the former police chief down to the driver of the Public Service Commission, a constitutional entity.

The recent spate of cases include members of the police from all levels. On the list there are also deputy commissioners, sessions judges, forest conservators, revenue board officials, bankers, district registrars, drivers of the passport office, physicians and more. The amount of wealth they have amassed through corruption is so staggering, it is as if they must be literally living on these mountains of money. The conjecture that is now popping up in people’s minds is, if they have made so much money, surely those more powerful than them have made even more!

The fact that some do indeed have much more is evident from the affidavits submitted by candidates during the election. The wealth of an MP increased by 54 times in five years and by 2,436 times in 15 years. His wife’s wealth increased by 34 per cent in five years.

Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) drew up a list of the top 10 MPs leading in increased assets and income over a span of five years. Under the law of the land, one cannot own more than 100 bighas of land, but the top 10 on this list own land from 1.5 to 20 times more than the stipulated amount. On 10 January this year, TIB issued a statement calling for an investigation into this wealth and also recommended that the surplus land be seized.

Even before TIB’s statement, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has said that they would probe into the abnormal amount of wealth recorded in the affidavits and they accordingly drew up a list of over a hundred candidates. These included candidates who have won in the election as well as those who had been defeated. They found the affidavits to be abnormal and suspicious.

One certainly must support the present move to investigate and take action regarding the corruption of certain persons. But are those who are even more powerful being hidden behind a smokescreen? Are the sensational scandals being used to whet people’s appetite and keep their attention diverted, while the files with the bigger allegations of scandals are being tucked away into the godowns?

2.

While all attention was riveted on these incidents of corruption, news broke out about the Public Service Commission’s exam paper leak. The police took speedy action and 17 persons were arrested.

But the commission’s explanation of the question paper leakage has led to many more questions. If it is true that half an hour before the exam starts, there is a lottery to select the questions from four sets (for non-cadre posts) and six sets (for cadre posts) of questions, then what question papers did the accused persons leak out?

The gravity of their offence is lessened to a large extent if they have been making money with fake questions.

Has the commission offered this explanation in order to save the accused from a heavy sentence? Question papers cannot come flying on their own accord into the pockets of the PSC chairman’s driver or a dispatch rider. Wherever and however the question papers were leaked out, can the commission chairman and members evade responsibility?

The commission has said that it has formed a three-member committee. We have long been castigating the police for forming their own inquiry committees to look into allegations against themselves. It surely is unwarranted and unacceptable for the commission to adopt such a practice too.

The inquiry must be conducted by a third party uninvolved with the commission. As the PSC is a constitutional body, this investigation should be conducted through the judiciary.

3.

The newspapers on 4 July published reports that the Export Prothom Bureau (EPB) admitted to the mistake of inflating figures in export records. Bangladesh Bank and the National Board of Revenue (NBR) decided to rectify the records.

The corrected records show that the export revenue to the first 10 months of the 2023-24 fiscal was actually USD13.8 billion less than projected. EPB had inflated the exports figures of the financial year before that too, by around USD 12 billion.

It is not difficult to understand that if the country’s export earnings decrease, this has a negative impact on other economic indicators too.

It was rather surprising, though, that there was no discussion in the newspapers that day about the impact of amending the export revenue figures. Even the financial newspapers were silent on the issue. So I turned to a friend of mine, a professor of economics at Dhaka University, and asked whether the GDP and national income would decrease as a result of export figures falling by USD14 billion.

As nothing of this was mentioned in the news, I just wanted to confirm my suspicions. My friend reassured me that my suspicions were true.

The next day The Daily Star did carry the observations of at least six top economists in this regard. Mustafa Mujeri, Deen Islam and MA Razzak said that the GDP would now have to be reevaluated.

According to MA Razzak, the GDP would go down by at least USD 6 billion. Centre for Policy Dialogue’s executive director Fahmida Khatun said now all statistics of the government had become void.

Two days later Banik Barta’s headlines read “From GDP growth to national income, everything will decrease.” The newspaper quoted the former state minister for planning MA Mannan as saying that this was no minor error, the sum was extremely large.

BIDS research director Kazi Iqbal said the national income records of the past years must be calculated too.

There has been debate in the country for over the past decade or so regarding prioritising economic growth over democracy. After all, priority had been attached to changing people’s lot by boosting economic growth, while rendering various important institutions of democracy ineffective. So naturally there was propensity to inflate the growth figures.

The latest news is that there have been discrepancies in the growth records of the past 10 years. Samakal highlighted the year-wise figures from 2014-15, indicating that in one decade a surplus of USD 65 billion had been projected in exports.

Now there are speculations that growth figures of almost every year of these 10 years will fall. What could be a bigger scandal?

4.

The hullabaloo over corruption scandals at the moment is only natural. But why are the politicians silent over the scandal of fudged figures of growth? Have we become so habituated to irregularities and the narrative of the authorities that we have forgotten to ask the very normal and logical questions?

* Kamal Ahmed is a senior journalist

* This column appeared in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten for the English edition by Ayesha Kabir