Dhaka, Jan 26 (IANS) Bangladesh’s Interim Government (IG) headed by Muhammad Yunus is likely to be remembered for an unprecedented adhoc governance marked by absence of a strategic approach and the creation of multiple counterproductive legal and operational risks that ran contrary to its core mandate of state reform, particularly in the area of anti-corruption, a report said on Monday.

It added that the Yunus government was frequently held hostage by internal resistance and forces it considered part of its power base, damaging the prospects of unprecedented opportunities to bring anti-corruption reforms.

Writing for Bangladesh’s leading newspaper, The Daily Star, Iftekharuzzaman, Executive Director of Transparency International Bangladesh, said nearly every Ordinance enacted by the Yunus government shows clear evidence of actions against the true spirit and objective of the own state reform mandate.

“The Police Commission Ordinance, for instance, is just an eyewash for police reform that will be no more than a rehabilitation resort for retired civil bureaucrats and police officials who will hold the key to sabotaging its stated purpose. An otherwise excellent National Human Rights Ordinance has been stabbed in the back by conspiratorially inserting a provision to ensure bureaucratic control in its formation, shattering the dream of an independent and effective commission,” Iftekharuzzaman stated.

“The Ordinances enacted under the IG related to cyber security, digital space, personal data protection, and data management have ensured mutually reinforcing, unaccountable surveillance power in the hands of the government and relevant agencies to enable targeted violation of the right to privacy, free media, dissent, and civic space. Aspirations of an effective and accountable Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), parallel with independence, have been sabotaged,” he added.

According to the report, the IG has failed to act on the recommendations gathered from the ACC-Reform Commission (ACC-RC), and 10 other Commissions, despite pledging to implement them “urgently” with executive authority and institutional collaboration.

“The ACC itself has also been complicit and even catalytic in this failure. Soon after the ACC-RC report was launched, the ACC at its top level confirmed their unqualified endorsement of all 47 recommendations. Both the ACC and the IG also knew that in the national consensus negotiations nearly all political parties endorsed almost every ACC-RC recommendation,” it mentioned.

“As the only stakeholder formally involved with the IG in the drafting process of the Ordinance to amend the 2004 Act, the ACC colluded with the forces of resistance in the government that took control of the reform process and conspiratorially prevented the inclusion of the provision to create the independent Review Committee to ensure accountability of the ACC,” it noted.

–IANS

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