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As
the Chair, Mr. Md. Abdul Hamid, Hon. Deputy Speaker,
opened the floor for discussion, Prof. Ali Ashraf opened
by saying that in his paper Dr. Moyeen Khan had shifted
the responsibility of accountability to the government.
"What is a Parliament?" he asked,
"Parliament is a composition of both the government
and opposition because all are elected representatives
of the people. Nobody can avoid the responsibility that
his accountability is with the electorate. It is a
milestone of history that this government has introduced
the provision that non-ministers shall be the
Chairperson of the committees. You have just heard from
the Deputy Principal Clerk of the House of Commons that
even after 700 years of democratic practices they have
not been able to set up a healthy democratic system. But
Dr. Moyeen Khan puts the onus on the government. As a
Member of Parliament he cannot deny his responsibility
as a representative of the people".
Mr.
Ashraf continued to say that: "Dr. Moyeen Khan, has
referred to the Finance Committee of which I am the
chairman. I can say that this Finance Committee has set
a unique example in the 29 years of history of the
country. This committee has met 31 times with such
members as the former Finance Minister, Mr. M.K. Anwar,
Mr. Amir Khasru Mahmud Choudhury and Mr. Karimuddin
Barasa. There was not a single note of dissent. We have
passed all resolutions unanimously. All decisions of the
Committee have been implemented and we do take stock of
things. So Dr. Moyeen Khan's observations about the
Finance Committee are not true. Dr. Moyeen Khan seemed
to be defending the conduct of a bureaucrat in a
committee meeting who called the Minister's statement
untrue. Committees, whenever they are sitting, are
working for the whole House. Both sides should work on
non-partisan basis and in our committee we are working
on non-partisan basis. People have elected us to ensure
transparency and accountability of the government. Who
is in the government we are not bothered. Dr. Moyeen
Khan can see the proceedings and find out that in the
Finance Committee we have already achieved what he is
hoping for. It
is the responsibility of all 330 members of the House to
set traditions of transparency and accountability".
Prof. Ashraf then quoted from Winston Churchill,
saying that without the opposition playing its due role,
it is not possible for parliamentary democracy to work
effectively. He said his committee discussed the budget
last year. Again this year the Finance Minister came to
the committee meeting and was given the opinions and
suggestions of the committee. If the government is there
but there is no opposition, then it is not a Parliament.
Intervening,
Dr. Moyeen Khan referred to a paragraph of his paper
wherein he had said it was not only the opposition
members but also the treasury bench members who have an
equally strong oversight role to play within the
committees. He clarified that nowhere he had said that
it was for the treasury bench members only to ensure
accountability. What he said was that it was for the
committee system to ensure accountability. Regarding the
Health Committee, Dr. Moyeen Khan insisted that
accountability has not been established. He repeated his
praise for the decision to make non-Ministers the
chairpersons of the committees but quoted newspapers
reports that said Ministers were not attending the
meetings.
Mr.
Akhtaruzzaman took exception to Khondokar Asaduzzaman's
remarks about civil and military bureaucrats retiring
and joining politics. He stated that, in the three years
he has been in Parliament, he has never heard Mr.
Asaduzzaman uttering a single word.
Referring to Mr. Asaduzzaman's comment that MPs
talk mostly about self and party, Mr. Akhtaruzzaman said
that he has taken serious exception to this remark
because MPs know what subjects to raise or to talk
about. He continued to say of Mr. Asaduzzaman that
"he is not the headmaster of the school".
It is the audacity of bureaucrats that they
always preach but never practice. He argued that he was
not nationally elected but was elected by the people of
his own constituency so he must speak about his people.
Mr. Akhtaruzzaman criticised Mr. Asaduzzaman's reference
to the accountability of the opposition. "In that
case", he said, "we shall have to change the
Constitution". Normally it is the accountability of
the government to the Parliament. He emphasised the
point by saying that when a Minister makes a statement,
nobody can ask questions. Regarding the Prime Minister's
Question Time, he said the Speaker always looks to the
right not to the left, meaning that opposition members
are barely allowed to ask questions.
Referring
to the walkouts, Mr. Akhtaruzzaman said that it is for
the opposition to decide when and on what issues to
stage walkouts. It
is not matter for the satisfaction of the treasury
bench. Referring specifically to the walk out prior to
the election of the Speaker, Mr. Akhtaruzzaman said it
was done to avoid the government trap where the
opposition's presence would have implied collusion with
the all-party consensus idea. If they had remained in
the House people would have said that they had elected
the Speaker. Referring to hartals, Mr. Akhtaruzzaman
expressed his appreciation that government has realised
that hartals are bad. He praised the Law Minister for
taking some initiative to ban hartals from the next
Parliament's tenure, saying it was a good approach.
"Make laws that you think are good", he said,
"but make them effective later so that you cannot
reap the benefit." He continued to say that
Parliaments are normally made lively by the opposition
and not by the treasury bench. But he argued that, while
parliamentarians are supposed to make laws, there may be
30 to 40 amendments but only one minute is allowed to
speak on those amendments.
He believed it was better if the amendments were
rejected outright than allowing only one minute. He
concluded by stressing again that if Parliament was to
really be meaningful, then the opposition leaders must
be allowed to speak and to receive an answer to their
questions.
Mr.
Abdul Matin Khasru, Law Minister, commended Dr. Moyeen
Khan's presentation.
He continued however to remark that observations
made in the paper were mostly not based on facts.
Referring to the quote of Mr. Suranjit Sengupta made by
Dr. Khan, saying that the press would be allowed to
attend committee meetings, Mr. Khasru said that
committees are guided by the Rules of Procedure.
"Until we change the Rules of Procedure there is no
way we can allow the press to be present in committee
meetings". Mr. Khasru continued to say that,
in the committees, members act like true representatives
of the people unlike in the House where members often
speak to the gallery. He also said that committee
chairpersons cannot unilaterally decide what to do or
what not to do. He contested Mr. Khan's remarks that
opposition members are not given enough time during the
Prime Minister's Question Time. Mr. Khasru referred to
the rule of serving notices and said that, unless the
opposition members show up, they cannot get more time.
The Minister made a specific mention of Mr.
Akhtaruzzaman being the lone opposition member who
attended the inaugural session of the conference. Mr.
Khasru explained he was also a Member of the last
Parliament and regretted that the then Leader of the
House did not attend a single committee meeting. He said
that the Constitution clearly lays down the scheme: the
Parliament is not to govern, it has other business.
Committees are creations of the Parliament, he said and
added that "what the Parliament cannot do itself
the committees also cannot do".
Mr. Khasru finally criticised Dr. Khan for siding
with a bureaucrat who had the "audacity to call a
senior parliamentarian elected eight times a liar".
On
being given the floor, Prof. Nizamuddin Ahmed of
Chittagong University stated that he found strong party
overtones in both the presentations. He said that,
regarding the working of the committees, what should be
considered is whether they are discussing soft issues or
hard issues. It is the hard issues that require
attention. In the British system, he said, they discuss
issues that normally do not have strong party positions.
He continued by referring to the 1979-83 House of
Commons when on certain subjects the committees were
divided strongly on party lines and, on the basis of
this, they decided to avoid such issues. He stated that
too much of stress on consensus would not help in
realising the objectives of the committee system. Prof.
Nizammuddin Ahmed was of the opinion that the West
European committee systems were more effective than the
British committee system. He cited the Indian
Parliament's practice of going into a four-week recess
after the general debate on the budget to allow the
different committees to scrutinise the demand for grants
for different Ministers, stating that he believed this
to be the way to ensure the oversight role of the
committee. He said that, in the 5th Parliament, members
of committees were more preoccupied with constituency
issues.
Prof.
Abul Fazal Haque of Rajshahi University praised Dr.
Moyeen Khan for presenting a very "lucid and hard
hitting" paper. He wanted to know the ratio of
representation of government and opposition members in
the committees, as well as what was the situation in the
5th Parliament, questioning: "are we going forwards
or backwards". He appeared to be supporting the
assertion of Dr. Moyeen Khan that the Prime Minister's
Question Time was being used for propaganda. However, he
wanted to know whether the 15 to 20% of opposition
questions were starred questions or supplementary ones.
Prof.
Mufazzalul Haque of Dhaka University spoke subsequently
and deliberated extensively on Mr. Haque's paper,
delivered in the first panel. He explained how the
powers vested in the Committees had in effect encumbered
their effectiveness in performing the oversight role. In
its present state, because the Parliament cannot deliver
goods and services on its own, the MPs tended to become
dependent upon the Ministers for becoming effective and
this naturally led the MPs to nurture ambitions of
becoming Ministers themselves. He also mentioned that
the number of committees (35 Standing Committees) was
not congenial to good accountability. The fact that each
Ministry had a committee was causing segmentation rather
than a sectoral approach and the broader perspective
which would ensure accountability was lost. He went on
to say that if these two issues could not be addressed,
then there was more merit in the old system of Ministers
heading the committees.
Explaining this statement, he said that, unlike
the European Countries, our societies were patriarchal
and bound by traditions and therefore the chairman will
naturally kowtow to the Minister. He suggested that
perhaps too much democracy has been adopted too soon and
that things should not be borrowed without relevance and
without taking into consideration the realities existing
in our society.
Continuing
his statement, Mr. Mufazzalul Haque referred to holding
sessions in camera, remarking that although this
practice encouraged members to take non-partisan stands,
it also spawned the disadvantage that if they were not
doing their job no one would know about it. As an
example he mentioned that to his knowledge, not one
committee had submitted a written report in the last
three years to the Parliament. In conclusion, he said
that issues at this juncture of our socio-economic
environment should be looked at from the macro rather
than micro viewpoint.
Following
this statement, Mr. Md. Moslem Uddin commented on
arguments expressed by the previous participants.
Responding to the above statement, Mr. Ali Ashraf took
the floor to correct some of the observations regarding
the submission of reports.
He said that the proceedings of all the
committees have been transferred to the Speaker and were
available to the Members.
Mr.
Nizamuddin continued the discussion by saying that,
although the reports may have been submitted to the
Secretariat, they were not available in the House. He
also said that he had seen the format of the committee
reports of the 5th Parliament and said that, with the
exception of one or two, most of them were simply
statements of the activities of the different
Ministries. In the absence of any recommendations
therein, it was not possible for the Government to
respond to the reports. Mr. A.M. Khasru responded to
this statement by saying that whether the Parliament or
the executive is to govern is clearly mandated in the
Constitution and there was no scope of
misinterpretation.
Mr.
Muhammad Faruk Khan observed that Mr. Moyeen Khan's
contention (in his paper) that the committee system had
utterly failed was incorrect and he continued by giving
some instances to show that the practices and procedures
had improved. Mr. Nurul Islam Nahid explained that Mr.
Asaduzzaman's remark about the MPs was made as a fellow
Member not as a bureaucrat. He also thanked Mr.
Akhtaruzzaman for revealing at last, the secret of the
first walkout.
Advocate
Abdul Hamid concluded the session by thanking the
presenters for their papers and all the participants for
the illuminating discussion.
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