The TI Chief made his comments in the backdrop of a recently passed new Bill on foreign funded NGOs; which has empowered the government to cancel their registration and stop funding for making malicious and derogatory comments against the Constitution and constitutional bodies. The paraphrase otherwise means if any such organization exposes corruption and criticizes the government for corruption, they would face punishment. Mr Jose Carlos Ugaz Sanchez-Moreno made his concerns clear saying it would reduce the space of civil society organizations and their moral strength to criticize the government and highlight corruption in government bodies and other high places. In his view Transparency International and its Bangladesh chapter is mandated to expose and carry out fight against corruption, it can’t watch things in silent.
We believe his remarks that civil society’s freedom is vital to eliminate corruption from society, otherwise the level of corruption will keep increasing, deserves highest attention of the government leaders instead of using threats to organizations for disclosing corruption.
Mr Jose Carlos during his visit to Dhaka to attend the 20th anniversary celebration of Bangladesh Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) also suggested that both TIB and ACC must work together to eliminate corruption. We must say his suggestion makes sense. We however believe the ACC must be able to exercise its independence and use the power like the TIB to dig out corruption in the government. Moreover unlike TIB, ACC has the constitutional power to arrest and prosecute people who have amassed illegal wealth.
We must say TIB and such other civil society organizations now or in the past had not acted to unnecessarily defame the government. Their sole purpose is to bring high corruption in the society to the notice of the government for remedial actions.
The TI Chief has correctly said corruption is enemy of the people not those who make disclosure of the corruption. Corruption must be common enemy to all. So in our view, it would have been better if the government instead of becoming intolerant every time corruption index in the government because public, rather make positive response to eliminate corruption. But when party men are mostly engaged in such corruption, and amassing illegal wealth, many believe that the new Foreign Donation Regulatory Bill has been enacted to keep the critics silent.
In our view the government should pay heed to Transparency International Chief`s call for taking corruption as the enemy of the people, not the organizations and people who speak out against corruption.
