THE Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) once again raised questions over main opposition Jatiya Party’s role in parliament and said some Tk 8 crore was wasted due to quorum crisis in the maiden session of the 10th parliament, which made 36 sittings between Jan 29 and Apr 10. The Berlin-based watchdog in its ‘Parliament watch’ report on Monday said though Jatiya Party did not boycott the session, its role in parliament was not satisfactory. At least these members of the present parliament should be fully under the control of the government as because the members own their existence to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.TIB Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman dubbed JP’s dual role as ‘unprecedented and exceptional’. He said “The opposition party (JP), which claims to be in an exceptional situation, is basically facing identity crisis. “Only time will determine how effective the parliament will be with this opposition’s role,” he said at a press briefing in Dhaka. He said boycotting parliament was not a key index of an effective House.”It does not mean the opposition party has played a proper role. However, time has not come yet to evaluate how much role they could play” Iftekharuzzaman said. HM Ershad-led JP earlier walked out of parliament for several minutes in protest against power tariff hike. However, the TIB has not found any active role of the opposition on issues related to public interest.We are surprised to find that TIB was expecting active role for the opposition that is officially part of the Cabinet. The TIB did not say it clearly that the whole arrangement is to have an obedient opposition as they have in China and Russia. The TIB director said out of the 36 sittings, the Leader of the House Sheikh Hasina was present in the House for 32 days while opposition leader was present during 14 sittings. The report said the trend of boycotting the parliament session has eased, but 28 minutes were wasted each day due to quorum crisis.A Parliament where only 2 percent of the time is spent on making laws cannot be called a parliament. This situation is intolerable as most MPs come from the business sector and therefore have little interest in making laws but are rather focused on making money – as is evident from the fact that 83 MPs did not take part in any session.Our public service institutions are becoming democratically dysfunctional, i.e. they have no public accountability because the ministers themselves have excluded people from the election process. The shameful thing is that an otherwise incompetent government is being exposed as unfit to govern itself. It was so easy a way to make the whole nation helpless by depriving the people of their right to elect the government. The concept of service to the nation is taking a back seat while the interests of the members of parliament and functionaries of the various government organisations have become a priority. This is a dangerous state of affairs for a free country. The reality is that not only the government engineered parliament, but also the government itself is collapsing in the absence of legitimacy and public accountability. Unfortunately, the government is not troubled for the satisfaction that the main opposition party BNP is not going for strong movement. But a failed government fails and disappears.
