It is no surprise that the anti-graft watchdog, Anti-Corruption Commission, has found corruption within its directors. Numerous media outlets on Tuesday carried reports that two directors of the ACC resorted to cheating in obtaining freedom fighters’ certificate to defer their retirement.
The Commission has already lost its arms to fight, teeth to bite, and nail to drag the corrupt ones in the regimes that started from 2009 which was once a powerful Commission during the military backed interim government. Where politics is corruption, we needed strong and independent Anti-Corruption Commission. Certainly, there are more fake freedom fighters to be bold as corrupt. The anti-graft body discovered the corruption miring incidents while investigating its nine officials, including a director general, who have obtained war hero’s certificates. The probe was launched on November 2 in the wake of media reports that some top bureaucrats fraudulently secured freedom fighter’s certificates. The ACC has completed investigation against its Director Golam Yahiya while the probe into the eight others is on.
In the report submitted to the commission late last month, the probe committee recommended that the government revoke Yahiya’s certificate and drop his name from the gazette.
Reports said, when Yahiya joined the ACC, he declared that he was not a freedom fighter. But later he secured the certificate without maintaining proper procedures. To evade departmental action, Yahiya resigned the very day the probe began. Another ACC Director Abdul Aziz Bhuiyan submitted a fake Muktijoddha Sangsad certificate to the Commission. The certificate bore a countersignature of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Serial numbered 49,719, the certificate does not bear an issue date. Sources in the Liberation War Affairs Ministry said the last certificate issued by the Muktijoddha Sangsad is serial numbered 47,931.
In the meantime, the ACC also took a controversial move by clearing former Health Minister Ruhal Haque and AL lawmaker Aslamul Haque of amassing illegal wealth. The ACC also exonerated former communications Minister Abul Hossain from the much-controversial Padma Bridge Graft Case with his 17 cohorts.
We are passing through a time when fake freedom fighters are to be everywhere in the state machinery. They are also most active in creating excesses everywhere. They have created such a high level of crisis for the reasons that fake freedom fighters being in important positions of state power. The very purpose of the peoples’ liberation war has thus been frustrated.
Corruption rules and the people are helpless victims. If it can gain courage and love for the country, let the ACC find the fake freedom fighters to expose them. That will make fighting corruption easier.
