In a country
where the culture of resignation from high office through taking moral
responsibility for misplaced action or non-action is yet to become a
norm, Atiur Rahman's decision to quit as Governor of Bangladesh Bank is
surely an exception. More importantly, as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
has termed it, Atiur Rahman's resignation was an act of courage on his
part. He did not offer any excuses for the $80 million-plus heist scam.
He was not willing to preside over the sacking of his subordinates
without at the same time entertaining thoughts of his own responsibility
in a scandal that has an entire country seething. In these past many
years, Atiur Rahman brought a new dimension to banking in Bangladesh. He
undertook programmes that would have the poor and the disadvantaged
have access to banking and the services such banking entailed.
And
now that he has resigned in the face of a crisis neither he nor anyone
else could have foreseen, we applaud the act. We would like to believe
that through his voluntary move to step down, he has set a precedent
which others, given similar circumstances within the structure of
government and the state, would do well to emulate. The sad reality is
that the cyber heist of the state's money reserves at the US Federal
Reserve in New York has not impelled anyone else into doing what Atiur
Rahman has done. But, yes, the Finance Minister, in a flurry of
activity, has had a number of senior officials, both at Bangladesh Bank
and the Finance Ministry, removed. On the face of it, the removals or
dismissals may be seen as evidence of swift moves at damage control by
the government.
But that cannot be considered as the full picture. In
a democracy, the overall responsibility for things going wrong lies
with the political head responsible for presiding over the Ministries or
departments concerned. Therefore, if it was a failure on the part of
Atiur Rahman, his two sacked deputy governors and some bureaucrats in
not being able to provide impeccable leadership to Bangladesh Bank, it
is equally a failure on the part of the Finance Minister to keep track
of institutions and people under his ministry. Abul Maal Abdul Muhith
did not prove equal to the task. He should have resigned the moment the
heist story hit the headlines. Indeed, his resignation should have
preceded that of the Governor of the central bank. That Muhith saw
little reason to resign (and that despite all the financial scams ---
Hall-Mark, Sonali Bank, Basic Bank, Share Market, et cetera, occurring
on his watch) or offer his resignation is regrettable. As the political
head of the Finance Ministry, he ought to have owned up to his own
inability to keep eyes focused on what was going wrong. He should have
done what Atiur Rahman has done. That act would have enabled the Prime
Minister to put in place an entirely new team to run the show at the
Finance Ministry and at Bangladesh Bank. But that, of course, has not
happened.
It is ironic that the heist scam has exploded in the
government's face at a time when, under the leadership of Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina, the country has been busy consolidating democracy and
building on its development goals. Such achievements as Bangladesh's
reaching a lower middle-income country status, and a good growth rate as
well as an increasingly assertive role in matters of foreign policy
have in recent times significantly added to Bangladesh's importance in
the global community. Not everything may have been perfect, but such
measures as ensuring a regularity of elections at various tiers of the
democratic structure cannot but be regarded as a deepening of
pluralistic roots in the country. But just as the nation has appeared to
be headed toward a structure of stabilization for itself, such suddenly
emerging impediments as the $100 million-plus heist, the British
decision to clamp a lid on direct flights of cargo from Bangladesh to
the United Kingdom, the breach of security at bank ATM booths, et
cetera, have come as a damper for the nation. That should not have been
the reality before us.
Insofar as the heist issue is concerned, some
political heads should have rolled by now. There are precedents where
the Prime Minister has acted tough, and swiftly at that, every time any
of her Ministers has stepped out of line in language or behaviour or
action. Latif Siddiqui is today a non-entity and Syed Abul Hossain does
not hold any office. And yet there are the instances of what more should
have been done, or should have happened. In recent weeks, two ministers
--- Quamrul Islam and AKM Mozammel Haque --- have embarrassed not just
themselves but also the government and the country through their
unbridled comments against the judiciary and specifically against the
Chief Justice. They should have resigned as soon as the first gasps of
outrage began to manifest themselves over their clear contemptuous
behaviour toward the judiciary. They did not resign and nor have they
been shown the door by the Prime Minister despite the fact that Supreme
Court issued contempt rule against them. Incidentally Quamrul escaped
PM's axe when he was accused of 'wheat scam'. These Ministers, together
with another of their colleagues --- Mofazzal Chowdhury Maya, whose
son-in-law is an accused in the Narayanganj seven-murder case --- should
have been asked to submit their resignations. Or they should have been
dropped from the Cabinet through swift clinical action. But perhaps
there is still time for these ministers to be shown the exit by the
Prime Minister? The longer these Ministers hang on to their jobs, bigger
the damage they will cause the PM, government, party and to the
country.
Our Ministers must prove their administrative efficiency
through a constant monitoring and supervision of the Ministries they
lead. But efficiency does not come through a mere change of office
location by Ministers when crises erupt. Against the background of the
UK decision regarding cargo flights from Bangladesh, Civil Aviation
Minister Rashed Khan Menon, along with the top bureaucrat of his
Ministry, decided to set up office at Hazrat Shahjalal Airport for the
duration of this month. That is rather amusing, to a certain extent
bizarre. If a Minister fails to perform or cannot keep his finger firmly
on the workings of his Ministry at his Secretariat Office, how does he
expect citizens to believe his presence at the airport will lead to an
improvement in security, perhaps even to a withdrawal by London of its
cargo-related move? Shifting offices to new locations is but an instance
of undesirable populism. It does not impress citizens.
It is time
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina should go for drastic action against her
non-performing, sometimes much-talking Ministers. She needs to drop them
without hesitation, for they have turned into a grave liability for her
government. She could then go for a thorough reshuffle of the Cabinet,
placing Ministers in Ministries where they can put up some performance.
The point must not be missed: the Cabinet must be freed of the deadwood
that has in these past few years been holding it back from working in
energetic form.
Postscript: Rumours and whispers are doing the
rounds about the possibility of a hand-over of cargo responsibility at
Hazrat Shahjalal Airport to a UK company. Let us hope the rumours and
whispers will end there, without graduating to reality. Even so, we
raise the question, just in case: are we as a society or nation so
poverty stricken, so bereft of professionally sound men and women as to
need people from overseas to take charge of our airport security? Where
has the idea of national self-esteem gone when PM Sheikh Hasina says we
can accomplish anything as we earned our liberation through a war?