An excuse for corruption of chosen ones

Your very eye-opening headliner about the National Board of Revenue (NBR) 'waiving' the law for vehicle imports for parliament members (DS Sept 30) is quite instructive. The fact that a supposedly independent body like the NBR can succumb to political pressure is bad enough. The additional fact that the tax law of the land, as passed by parliament, can be openly and formally 'waived' tells us quite a bit about the substance of Bangladesh's parliamentary democracy which the PM was taking credit for in New York with the claim that she established the 'rule of law.' What is also interesting in your article is the author's blaming a former military ruler for the tax dodging, even though that ruler has been history for quarter of a century; at some point, laying the blame for all the ills of the land at the door of the British, the Pakistanis, and the military simply becomes an excuse for the corruption of those who we desperately want to idolise. I credit the author of the story for admitting rather grudgingly that the former caretaker government had actually refused to indulge politicians in this wholesale theft of the national exchequer.