In the case concerning the Minister for Railways, many
miscalculated the outcome. Analysts of political events have spoken and
written that Suranjit Sen Gupta would retain his post and the hue and
cry over the Taka 7 million found in the car of his APS when he was
coming to his residence close to midnight, would die down like similar
incidents in the past. They based their prediction on the assumption
that the Prime Minister would not sack the Minister, the allegations
against him notwithstanding, because that would give political victory
to the Opposition.
Unanswered mystery
When the Minister resigned, everybody thought that he was not just
out of the Ministry of Railways but out of the Cabinet as well. There
was of course no reason to believe to the contrary. The fact that the
Minister Sen Gupta was later retained in the Cabinet was a mystery yet
to be answered.
A section of the civil society members were the first to be fooled
into believing that the Minister was out of the Cabinet and ended
embarrassing themselves. What is more, they went ahead and congratulated
the Prime Minister for forcing the Minister out and felicitated the
Minister for his courage and his commitment for democracy for deciding
to resign.
Even the Chairman of the Human Rights Commission also did not waste
time to welcome the Prime Minister’s decision to encourage the Minister
to resign and the Minister for listening to the Prime Minister as a
victory for democracy. One just wonders what human rights issue was
involved in the resignation to have encouraged him to come to the media
and give the statement he gave. The Ministers of the Government warmly
felicitated their leader for her courage, her wisdom and political
vision in the service of democracy and called the Minister’s resignation
a “historic” event!
The decision of the Prime Minister to keep the Minister in the
Cabinet after raising the optimism that he was in fact sacked, showed in
bad light those in the civil society who had hurriedly gone ahead to
congratulate the Prime Minister and the Minister. In fact, the Prime
Minister did nothing unpredictable for she was not prepared to let it
appear that she had given in to the demand of the Opposition. She just
removed the Minister from his post as she had done with the former
Minister for Communications; only this time she reacted quickly to give
the impression that she was sacking the Minister.
Nevertheless, if it was just the fact that she was retaining
Suranjit in the Cabinet so as not to give in to the demand of the
Opposition, she ended giving the impression that her claim of zero
tolerance on corruption was a mere lip service to the issue. The tall
claims made by her Ministers and members of the civil society that the
resignation was a victory for democracy was made laughable when the
Minister was retained in the cabinet as a Minister without portfolio. In
particular, those Ministers who had hailed Suranjit’s resignation as
“historical” should now know what historical stupidity they made by
their hurried claim.
Unpardonable
In retrospect, Suranjit (SSG) committed more blunders than other
Ministers against whom charges of corruption were brought in the past.
He intervened with the Border Guards and the Police on behalf of his
APS and senior officials of his Ministry after they were apprehended
with Taka 7 million in their car. The fact that they were coming with it
to his residence at close to midnight after picking the money from a
suburb in the city made the case look more suspicious. If he knew that
there was that amount of money in the car when he intervened with the
authorities, he made a serious error of judgment. For a politician who
took such immense pleasure to rub his self-acclaimed expertise in legal
and constitutional issues on the opposition, that act, even
unintentional, was unpardonable.
Unfortunately for SSG, other facts suggested that he was not really
unaware of what he was doing. If indeed there was any need to intervene
with the authorities on behalf of the Ministry’s officials on questions
of identity, a Minister would normally leave such a matter to his
Private Secretary or someone else in his Ministry. By intervening
himself, the Minister showed a personal interest in the case. Further,
in a Ministry’s staff, an APS of the Minister is one who is closest to
the Minister. A Minister has the right and all Ministers use it to
appoint someone who looks after his personal affairs to such a post. In
fact, one appointed to the post of an APS need not even be a serving
civil servant at the point of being named to the post.
Whistle blower
The Minister’s first acts proved his knowledge of what those
apprehended were up to. The driver of the car as the whistle blower gave
the public the reason to doubt the Minister’s innocence. The presence
of Yusuf Ali Mridha in the car was another very serious incriminating
evidence of corruption. He has since been accused by the employees’
association of the Railway Ministry as being the leader of money for job
racket in the Ministry that has so far netted huge amounts of money
from the 7,000 plus posts on offer in the Ministry.
Additional facts emerged from family sources that did not help the
Minister in fighting the quicksand into which he fell. Suranjit’s son,
just couple of days before the incident [later named in the media as
Railway Gate], had paid Taka 5 crore as fee for a telecommunications
license he was granted by the Bangladesh Telecommunications Board. The
Minister’s son was working in an internet service provider Agni Systems
for a monthly salary of Taka 50,000 till only recently.
At the same time, the Minister was scheduled to open his own mall,
the Sen Mall in Sunamganj town that was built at costs running into huge
sums of money. The circumstantial evidence, both connected and
unconnected to Railway Gate, all piled up to leave the people convinced
that the Minister was far from being the epitome of honesty and
integrity that he tried to project about himself and his politics.
The Minister’s 50 years of politics did not prepare him for dealing
with the situation that confronted him. He made a series of other silly
mistakes to complicate his predicament. He formed two committees, one
under his Private Secretary and another under a Joint Secretary in his
Ministry for clearing the allegations. He then suspended his APS and
then sacked him not knowing what was correct or what would be acceptable
to the public. He sent the Ministry’s officials on leave at first and
then suspended them. Later he formed a committee to investigate into the
whole incident at a senior level.
Judicial inquiry ridiculed
In the midst of these series of confused behaviour, he ridiculed a
BNP lady MP who had asked for a judicial inquiry, calling her a novice
who was unaware about the serious business of governance. In hindsight
he ended being the novice himself for if he had accepted her demand and
asked for a judicial inquiry instead of trying to clear himself by
forming committees under officials controlled by him, he would have
given an impression of honest intent to the public.
At the height of crisis, he once hinted that if the allegations
against him were proven he would resign. He then somersaulted and
declined to do so, loudly claiming that none of the charges were against
him and therefore he was under no compulsions, under issues of
democracy or ministerial responsibility or otherwise, to resign.
During the crisis, the opposition made him nervous by loudly
demanding his resignation and for probe in to the allegations of
corruption. He could perhaps have faced those demands of the opposition
if he had any support forthcoming from his own party.
Senior members of his party led by former Home Minister Mohammad
Nasim joined voice with the Opposition and asked him to take
responsibility for his actions, in other words asked him to resign. In
fact Mohammad Nasim’s comment that the ‘Railway Bhavan’ would not be
allowed to become the ‘Hawa Bhavan’ hurled at the Minister much more
serious accusation of corruption than what the opposition could
articulate.
When the Prime Minister returned from Turkey and consulted her
close aides on the incident, the Minister’s goose was cooked. The
Minister was given the post only recently after he was by-passed three
years ago because he had annoyed the Prime Minister as a reformist
during the period of the last caretaker government. He was included
eventually after he had become an embarrassment for the Prime Minister
and the ruling party with his criticisms aimed at just not the
government but also at the Prime Minister and her family. The Minister,
by what he did or failed to do with Railway Gate, gave the Prime
Minister the opportunity to snub a colleague for whom she had no reason
for compassion.
Therefore there was no service done to democracy nor was it
intended as the members of the ruling party projected initially. The
Minister, by his actions gave the Prime Minister the opportunity for
which she was waiting and she did not miss that opportunity. She did not
go to the full extent of humiliating the Minister because she did not
want to give the opposition any opportunity to feel that she had acted
under pressure from them.
The whole nation heaved a sigh of relief that the Prime Minister
had held a colleague responsible for corruption and moved him from his
post quicker than she did with the former Minister of Communications.
However, they welcomed it more because they felt that the Minister more
than deserved it. Their only pleasure was that the Prime Minister
sealed the mouth of a politician who irked not just the opposition but
many right thinking people by his self-righteousness and the manner in
which he ridiculed his opponents on issues of corruption by placing
himself on a pedestal of honesty and integrity.
The Prime Minister will richly deserve the nation’s congratulations
only when she completed the process of allegations against the
Minister, his Ministry, his wealth and his son Soumen Sengupta’s Taka 50
million, not forgetting from where the Taka 7 million came from and why
were the culprits headed for the Minister’s house. Otherwise, her
action to force the Minister to resign from his post would be a victory
not for democracy but for corruption. Her decision to keep him in the
Cabinet as a Minister without portfolio hinted that corruption still had
a head start over democracy in winning the Railway Gate case.
SSG resurrected
The Railway Gate had pulled down the ruling party to a new low
politically given the fact that it was its promise to fight corruption
with zero tolerance that had helped it win a thumping majority in the
last elections. When the Prime Minister had appeared to have sacked SSG
on that zero tolerance, the ruling party managed to undo a lot of the
potential damage that Railway gate had done to it. With SSG now
resurrected as a Minister where there was no support for him even from
his party and the Prime Minister not entirely unhappy with his
predicament, India is being mentioned as the power that intervened on
his behalf.
The emergence of the India factor has created more serious
liabilities for the ruling party Awami League. By keeping the Minister
in the cabinet, it failed to convince the people of its zero tolerance
on corruption. Now with the India factor to deal with; the ruling party
has a very dangerous combination at hand looking ahead into the next
general elections. India’s standing in Bangladesh’s politics because of
its failure to deliver on many promises it made to it is now at an all
time low.
BY : M. Serajul Islam.
