Editorial
Income statements of cabinet members
Why to PM and not to the public?
The cabinet has decided that all ministers, ministers of state, deputy ministers and individuals of similar status in government will submit annual statements of their income and wealth to the prime minister. It will then be for the cabinet division to keep records of those statements. Whether or not such statements are released in the public domain will be for the prime minister to decide.
The move does not quite arouse the kind of enthusiasm among citizens it should have. The cabinet decision clearly leaves everything -- transparency, public accountability -- to be decided by the prime minister as she deems fit. It actually increases PM's hold on her cabinet colleagues, but does not add to public transparency or accountability. In fact, the PM could receive information from the NBR, why should she insist on getting it from her colleagues if she does not make it public?
Actually, it is of critical importance that by taking such a step the cabinet has patently ignored the manifesto the Awami League made public prior to the general elections of December 2008. Citizens at the time were cheered by the party's pledge to have the income and wealth statements of the prime minister, members of the cabinet, members of parliament and their families made public every year as a way of promoting transparency and accountability in governance. The ruling party has in these past two years and a half inexplicably and, we might add, to its own embarrassment, studiously turned its back on the promise. What it now offers only raises more questions than it can answer.
Moreover, while the finance minister himself led the way by submitting his wealth statements since becoming a minister, why did his other colleagues fail to meet the requirement for more than two years?
To suggest that public concerns will be assuaged by cabinet members' submission of wealth statements to the prime minister has something of the farcical about it. That is because it makes no mention of the income and wealth of lawmakers as well as of family members of ministers and parliamentarians. Finally, all statements of income and wealth must annually be made public. Such statements must be monitored through effective mechanisms. And rather than the cabinet division preserving wealth statements, it should be for bodies like the Anti-Corruption Commission, Bangladesh Bank and National Board of Revenue to keep track of the wealth of the nation's public figures. The cabinet must rethink the issue.
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