Highly ominous

The latest move to provide civil servants with legal shield from criminal cases filed while discharging their official duties has exposed once again the government's preference to "win" loyalty rather than dispense justice and serve the interest of the aggrieved. 

Once the proposal approved by the cabinet on Monday is translated into law, a public servant committing criminal offence like graft, bribe and extortion cannot be detained without permission of the government before the charge sheet is accepted by a court.

This will put the civil servants into a special privileged class with a strong legal protection and place them in a category above any other.

No other citizen group of the country enjoys such a protection. Any citizen can be arrested by the police immediately after being sued for any of the criminal charges like corruption, bribe and extortion. Police does not need any permission from anybody to do so. 

This discriminatory provision, according to some legal experts, will run counter to article 27 of the constitution. This article, which deals with one of the fundamental rights of citizens, reads: "All citizens are equal before law and are entitled to equal protection of law."

But it seems the government cared little about the constitutional provision this time too. And its latest move is not an isolated one.

In November 2013, the then Awami League-led government was eager to offer the bureaucrats legal protection from graft charges. It had amended the Anti-Corruption Commission Act, 2004 to this effect. It had also introduced a provision that required the ACC to take the government's permission before filing graft cases against public officials.

In amending the ACC law, the government had paid no heed to the growing concern and criticism raised by different non-government organisations working for good governance, and various donor agencies and countries.

Finance Minister AMA Muhith, the ACC and even the parliamentary standing committee on the law ministry that scrutinised the amendment to the ACC law bill had opposed the government's move to clip the anti-graft body's wings.

In another generous move in February 2013, the government had provided the public servants with a legal shield from contempt of court. By enacting the Contempt of Court ACT 2013, it had curtailed the court's constitutional power to deal with contempt cases.

The law made provisions that the court could not summon any government officials before it in a contempt of court case, and the contempt case against any government official will become ineffective immediately after his/her retirement.

The High Court however has stood on the way on both occasions. It has declared void and unconstitutional both the legal shields the government had given to its officials through amending the ACC law and the Contempt of Court Act as both the provisions were against article 27 of the constitution.

In another recent move, the cabinet on June 22 approved proposals to bring changes in the Mobile Court Act 2009 to empower the executive magistrates to punish an alleged wrongdoer even after he denies the offence.

The existing provision of the 2009 act empowers executive magistrates to punish an alleged offender only after he admits of any wrongdoing.

Once the proposed changes come into effect, their new found judicial clouts will help them in their move to regain the judicial powers they had lost after separation of the judiciary from the executive in 2007.

In another effort to keep the employees happy, the government has announced to implement some proposals in the current fiscal in addition to a new pay scale to go into effect this month.

The finance minister in his budget speech in June proposed setting up a commercial and development bank for the welfare of the government staffs.

According to his proposal, the "Samriddhi Sopan Bank" would be owned by public employees and it would operate with an initial paid-up capital of Tk 400 crore.

He also announced that there would be a pension fund for government employees. A Pension Fund Management Authority will administer pension-related activities, and allocate a fund for it to pay for pensions and make investments to implement welfare programmes for the pensioners.

The government also seeks to extend housing facilities.

Moreover, the government in previous years has been quite liberal with promotions to civil servants. The mass promotion has already created imbalance in the administration as the number of officials who have got promotion is much higher than the number of posts existing in the bureaucracy.

Close to the end of its term in 2013, the government did not pay any heed to widespread criticism against its move to amend the ACC law. Its attitude had raised crucial question whether the then ruling AL had planned to return to power banking on the help of the civil bureaucrats.

The AL has retained power by winning the one-sided parliamentary election held on January 5, 2014 boycotted by the BNP-led alliance.

The administration has favoured and helped the then AL-led government to hold the one-sided election. Is the government now obliged to return the favour to the bureaucrats?

If so, then the move to give them legal shield from criminal cases, provide them with more judicial clouts, and a commercial bank, new pay scale and other benefits and mass promotion is a manifestation of a policy of give and take. In such a policy, people do not matter much. The state apparatus does.