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Download PDF The Anti-corruption Commission (ACC) is rather okay with Transparency International’s (TI) perception that no significant development has been made in curbing corruption in Bangladesh over the last year, considering that graft in the country has not increased.
“We could’ve gone backwards while conducting the drive against corruption, but we didn’t. We started the drive at a time when the country was engulfed by corruption, and we arrested the graft suspects,” ACC Director General (Admin) Col Hanif Iqbal told the Daily Star yesterday in his reaction to TI’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2008.
Hanif made several observations about the CPI which showed just 0.1 improvement in Bangladesh’s score which now stands at 2.1, raising the country’s position from the seventh to the tenth from the bottom.
“The improvement is negligible. But the efforts taken so far against corruption are more important than the improvement. We have tried, kept the drive alive and at present trying to give it an institutional shape,” Hanif noted.
“The activities we initiated against corruption would not be reflected in reports right now, but those have laid a strong foundation for continuing the drive,” he went on.
The judiciary and the legal system have not been that friendly to the drive, Col Hanif observed adding, “The commission has been trying to gain capacity starting from scratch.”
If the current working policy of the commission remains unchanged and no one intervenes from outside, the efforts taken so far to curb corruption will have a long term effect, he said.
“Had the judiciary and the legal system been friendlier to the drive, things could have been better,” Hanif added.
He said the ACC is optimistic about the future outcome of the drive, if the commission is allowed to continue the way it is functioning now.
Replying to a question regarding alleged lack of coordination among government institutions involved in the anti-graft drive, Hanif said, “It’s not correct. We had coordination where it was necessary.”
Regarding another allegation that necessary reform in the government administration has not been brought to help curb corruption, he quipped, “Bringing reform to the government administration does not fall within the commission’s jurisdiction.”
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