TERMING the last Parliamentary Election as controversial, the Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) while releasing its study-findings to the media on Sunday has laid emphasis on holding an inclusive and credible election to make the Parliament more effective. The TIB also placed a 12-point proposal to make the parliament really effective. The TIB collected information of 10th Parliament from second to sixth sessions to prepare the research paper. As the source of information, the TIB study-team followed Parliament Sessions directly and used news aired by Sangsad Television. Besides, it used bulletins, reports of parliamentary standing committees, government gazette, books, features and newspaper articles, as per the reports published by the media including The New Nation.About 50 parliamentary standing committees were formed in the 10th Parliament, but strangely only one opposition lawmaker was nominated as the president of one such committee. Although the members’ presence in the committee meeting was 56 per cent, the parliamentary committees faced severe criticism for influencing some major decisions by a section of committee members. There are also allegations of business interests of some committee members. The present and former Ministers, who are members of the Parliament Standing Committees, created an unholy nexus to exercise their power for influencing decisions. According to TIB report analyzing data of Eighth, Ninth and Tenth parliaments, the number of appreciations of the ruling party and government was 7500 times while the opponent political alliance was criticised by the ruling party for about 7268 times. Meanwhile, criticising the opposition party without naming Jatiya Party, the TIB local Chief Executive mentioned that the so-called opposition meaning Ershad’s Jatiya Party dances like a doll at the wishes of the government. Jatiya Party is a part of the government and it requires to be endlessly shameless to say that it is in the government to criticise the government. Jatiya Party’s existence as opposition is contrary to the constitutional role of the opposition. But nothing the government does is unconstitutional, because the Constitution is what it says. We also know that Jatiya Party members in parliament will leave the government at the earliest opportunity when the government will find itself in real trouble. Besides, Jatiya Party had to leave power in the face of popular movement against its undemocratic rule in the past.The government blinded by the fact that it is in power without the need of election, it feels confident to continue in power without facing the people in a free election. The sycophants will remain a strong voice in the government. So it is the government’s plan to fill the parliament with the ‘yes men and women’ to say yes to whatever the government does. The government as their creator cannot be criticised.
