We have intellectuals who are ready to accept the worst kind of corruption and horrific incompetence of the government as long such government moves toward authoritarianism of socialism type. They are the ones who directly or indirectly look for opportunities and support in a vital way to the destruction of democracy.
What is highly repugnant is their conduct of putting all the blame on the social culture. They are certainly intellectuals of a particular camp but basically not believing in people’s sovereignty over the government.
These intellectuals believe that only they know what is best for the people and what follows from this attitude is that the people’s right to form the government or enjoying personal rights is unthinkable. These intellectuals did not oppose when under BKSAL one party government all rights of the people were denied including the free election.
We do not find any usefulness in mentioning the names. They know who we are referring to and many others also know who they are. We also know that other than their feeling of superiority as anti-democracy political thinkers, they are respectable persons. Some are as teachers and academics but they certainly are undermining the sovereign rights of the people. They hope to see dictatorship of socialism is established in Bangladesh.
What we urge them is till their dreams are materialised they must refrain from blaming our society for political wrongs and injustices of others. According to them the crimes are, though committed by government supporters, blame is thrown at the social culture and not at the political culture of the government. They forget that they are what they are because of the facilities society gave them generously.
They give economic theories but do not say how incompetent is for running the country’s economy. Any sensible government would have discarded them.
They praise a failed government in the hope there is coming an opportunity for them to participate in a government of meritocracy.
The government in our country cannot show success in any area yet propaganda machine is overactive to say that never before the country has experienced so much development. The people have been deprived of the election to continue in power against the people’s wish. That cannot be seen as success story.
Through plundering and free corruption the country’s economy is now in a hollow state and the government is desperate to collect money under police threat.
There is no consideration that the general public have not become miraculously rich like the government men. Lies are not helping the general public alley the hardship. The burden of living has become so heavy that to remain alive is difficult for the common men. The government has to be satisfied by paying as the government demands. This is to happen when the government is under siege of bureaucrats.
The government, through the NBR, the main breadwinner for the government, has been tasked with bringing home Tk 325,600 crore in fiscal 2019-20, up 16.29 percent from this year’s revised budget. Part of the reason for this very high revenue target is obviously the increase in pay of civil servants-the eight national pay scale approved increases from 91 to 101 percent-in one stroke doubling the need for the government to earn revenue.
But this has been achieved through increased tax collection-especially through VAT and income tax. VAT is being levied on anything and everything-despite the fact that some growth industries like the online shopping industry should not be taxed as they remain one of the few growth areas of the economy. Even talking on the phone to our near and dear ones is being taxed with a whopping 27 percent rate-which is going to make it difficult for anyone to even find a soul mate.
Meanwhile the bank looters and plunderers still have not been made to account for the losses which they have created by plundering the banks while the government is busy re-capitalizing them with hard earned taxpayers money. The use of taxpayers monies to replace looted capital of banks is totally fiscally irresponsible. Meanwhile people are being asked to pay ever higher amounts of tax, including income tax and VAT on everything from mobile talktime to online shopping. Why should the people pay for the deliberate policy misdeeds of the government?
But unfortunately this has not led to a reduction in corruption. Even the PM has admitted that increasing public servants salaries should have led to a concomitant reduction in public sector corruption, but this has not happened. And there seems to be no reason for it to happen, as the government has essentially indemnified the public sector officials. The Sarkari Chakori Ain 2018 has already emboldened public servants as under the law they cannot be arrested until a court frames charges against them.
This law may be one of the reason for the continuing high levels of corruption in the public sector. Government employees were supposed to declare their wealth at the time of entering the service and disclose their wealth statements every five years but in practice, however, government officials do not submit their wealth statements every five years.
On the other hand the rate of implementation of projects for the ADP remains slow. Most of the fund implementation occurs within the last three months of the fiscal year, which would make anyone wonder if the funds are indeed being implemented properly or in a whimsical manner. Our mega projects like flyovers cost over 50 percent more than those in China, Malaysia, or India.
With a steady rise in our mega projects implementation one wonders how much of the funding will be really wasted. Why can’t we control project costs and reduce our expenditure? Why must each successive budget have to be greater than the last? Why can’t we decide that our poor income tax payers need a break and that their money needs to be well spent? Why must we show of ever increasing budgets and make the people suffer hardship because the plunderers in government emptied the economy?
The government must ask the plunderers and looters to return the public money. Catch hold of those who have kept huge amount money in Swiss banks. They will have to beg borrow for survival.
