The Anti-Corruption Commission has decided to organise countrywide pre-election programmes to motivate people to elect honest lawmakers in the coming national parliamentary election. The commission will organise on ‘Dudok Songlap’, a mass dialogue programme, with participation of nomination aspirants from all political parties, civil society representatives and local people in all the 64 districts, the commission officials said.
The ACC commissioner M Shahbuddin told New Age that the programmes will start after the announcement the election schedule by the election commission.
The commission fixed a slogan ‘Upajukta Bekti Nirbachon Karbo, Durnity Mukta Desh Gorbo’ (Let us elect honest people, let us build a corruption-free country).
The commission will send letters to the Bangladesh Television and Bangladesh Betar to broadcast the programmes from all the districts.
The official said that the programmes will be organised by its 22 district offices. The commission has already allocated Tk 11 lakh in this regard.
The ACC research and prevention cell had completed the outline of the programmes, the official said.
The commission hopes that the programmes will play a major role to protest against the use of black money during election time, he said.
Iftekharuzzaman, executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh, told New Age that the initiative would play a positive role to reduce corruption in political field if the ACC runs the programs sincerely.
‘The commission would lose its credibility if it serve the agenda of any political party in the name of the programme [Dudok Songlap],’ he said.
Some 93 per cent of the people in 107 countries that were surveyed branded political parties as the most corrupt institutions, according to a recent TIB report.
The report said that corruption in the police administration was more alarming than it was in the judiciary and political parties and the extent of corruption in Bangladesh increased in 2011–12.
TIB released the report on July 9, this year.
The survey on Bangladesh conducted jointly by the Transparency International and its Bangladesh chapter said that 93 per cent of Bangladeshi respondents thought that the political parties and the police were the most corrupt institutions, followed by the judiciary, accounting for 89 per cent of the respondents, and the legislature, accounting for 88 per cent of the respondents.
Addressing an ‘Academic Conference-2013’ organised by the Rashtrobigyan Samiti (Political Science Association) at Dhaka University Nabab Nawab Ali Chowdhury Senate Bhaban, former caretaker government chief adviser Justice Muhammad Habibur Rahman on Saturday said that politicians were more corrupt than government officials as the corrupt politicians—both of ruling and the opposition parties—could hardly be brought to book.
‘The corruption of elected representatives has surpassed that of government officials,’ he said, adding corruption is the top challenge for the nation.
-With New Age input
