Election and corruption
People, even at the grassroots level, nowadays have a fair knowledge about the unfair practice adopted by the politicians during the national elections. It is an open secret that the candidates seeking election to the national assembly spend crores of taka. In many cases the amounts spent by a candidate exceed Tk 20 crore as it is openly discussed. This sounds like a fabulous story. Although it sounds strange it is a fact. A saying goes that sometimes facts sound stranger than fiction. Our country has been unfortunately branded as a country where corruption and malpractice galore. If we go deep into the matter it will clearly transpire that one of the starting points of corruption is electioneering. We are to find out the sources of such huge amounts of money spent by the candidates. The question arises because the voters know the financial standing of the candidates. Although there are rules in all matters relating to the elections, the executive authorities do not bother to enforce the rules and regulations. To enforce the rules/laws the Election Commission has to depend upon the executive authorities that act at their suit will. The people who are voters know every candidate closely or remotely. And they know their (candidates') financial position too. Ultimately, they cannot find out their candidates' sources of income. Everything remains shrouded in mystery. The media publish reports regularly giving details of election campaigns and the way such huge amounts are spent. But nothing is done to stop it.
The candidates have got their own profit and loss account. They know how to recover the money with interest. But our finance minister while commenting on this issue on Aug 29/2005 refused to accept that this conduct of the MPs amounted to corruption. He cited examples of expenditures incurred by the candidates in the US, Japan and some other countries where billions of dollars are spent in every such election. This is not good analogy. Such comparison between the peoples of the richest countries and the poorest countries of the world is not logical.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.