Administration cadres from across the country yesterday gathered in the capital and demanded deferment and review of implementation of separation of the judiciary from the executive.
About 600 administration officials at a seminar strongly opposed stripping of their magistracy power and the process of absorbing BCS cadres in the judicial service, which sets separate provisions of job experience for administrative and judicial cadres.
Leaflets of the BCS Admin Cadre Association were circulated among the audience. The leaflets said all administration cadres will be forced to resign if the government separates the judiciary in such discriminatory way. The cadres, however, expressed their ignorance about who distributed the leaflets.
Bangladesh Institute of Administrative Management (BIAM) foundation organised the seminar titled “Separation of Judiciary for Good Governance” at the BIAM auditorium.
Abu M Moniruzzaman Khan, rector of Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre, attended the seminar as chief guest while Dr Abul Hossain, a project director of the women and children affairs ministry, presented the keynote paper. Dhaka Divisional Commissioner Ekram Ahmed presided over the function.
Speakers said at the seminar that if the government continues with its decision to implement separation of the judiciary on November 1, there will be anarchy in delivering justice and maintaining law and order as necessary infrastructure and logistics support have not been made available.
The aggrieved field-level administrators said the administration will be weakened and there will be lawlessness if the government takes away their judicial power, including that of controlling law and order, running mobile courts and acting as magistrates during public examinations and elections.
It will also take away the local administrators’ power of implementing government programmes like disaster management programmes and looking after public khas land.
“We cannot push the country towards anarchy in the name of independence of the judiciary,” Magistrate Rokon-Ud-Doula said, adding that it is not possible to implement a meaningful separation of the judiciary before 2021.
On appointment of 179 new judicial magistrates, Dr Abul Hossain said in his keynote paper, “It is totally impossible to run 655 magistrate’s courts with only 179 judicial magistrates.”
He pointed out the discrimination in fixing the eligibility of the administration cadres and judicial cadres and opposed the provision of absorbing the BCS cadres in judicial service.
An administration cadre needs to have 15 years’ experience to be the chief judicial magistrate or chief metropolitan magistrate while a judicial cadre will need only 10 years’ experience.
An administration cadre needs to have 12 and eight years’ experience for being appointed as additional chief judicial magistrate and senior judicial magistrate or metropolitan magistrate while a judicial cadre will need only seven or four years’ experience, Abul Hossain mentioned.
Abdul Muyeed Chowdhury, former secretary and adviser to the caretaker government said, “Bringing the magistracy under the law ministry is not separation of the judiciary.” To ensure true separation of the judiciary, the magistracy needs to be brought under a separate secretariat under the Supreme Court, he added.
Demanding scrapping of the law for contempt of court, Magistrate Rokon-Ud-Doula said, “The media is writing about the corruption of ministers and bureaucrats, but it cannot write anything about the judges’ corruption in fear of contempt of court.”
Pointing out that an administration cadre has to retire from job at the age of 57 while the judges retire at 67, he said, “This discrimination cannot go on.”
Rokon called for suspending all activities at the secretariat and district and upazila offices if he is sued or arrested for saying this.
He urged all magistrates to come to Dhaka after withdrawal of the state of emergency to force the government to scrap the contempt of court law.
Columnist Farhad Mazhar said he will oppose the separation unless an elected government implements it.
“As if the court has become an NGO–we will not accept the court if it takes a single penny from the foreign donors,” he said, hinting at a capacity building project for the judiciary funded by the World Bank.
The speakers welcomed separation of the judiciary from the executive but said the government did not consult all parties concerned before fixing November 1 for implementing the separation.
They said the separation will only shift the control of the judiciary from the establishment to the law ministry–it will not make the judiciary independent.
The magistrates said after returning to their stations they will recommend how to address the “anomalies” resulting out of the hurried implementation of separation of the judiciary.
The BCS Admin Cadre Association will accumulate the recommendations and send for the government’s consideration.
Former deputy commissioner of Dhaka Abdul Mobarak, Bangladesh Biman Airlines Ltd Managing Director MA Momen and BIAM Director General Mohamamd Sadique also addressed the seminar
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