21 August 2004	Saturday	04 Rajab 1425

DHAKA: The executive wing of Bangladesh's state machinery received a couple of lashes from the judiciary last week. The first one came on August 16 by way of the High Court's rejection of a government's male-chauvinistic step undermining the equal rights of the female ward commissioners elected to the reserved seats for the city corporations.

The second one came the day after, by way of the Supreme Court's refusal to give the government any more time to implement the certain court directives, issued around five years ago to free the lower judiciary from the control of the executive.

In the first case, an High Court bench comprising Justice Hamidul Haque and Justice Zinat Ara ruled against a circular of the ministry of local government, rural development and cooperative, headed by the secretary general of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, a former left-winger, providing that the commissioners elected to the general seats of the city corporations are superior to those elected to reserved seats for women to the same metropolis-level local bodies.

The government circular, issued on September 23, 2002, said that the female commissioners elected to the reserved seats would not have the right to some of the 16-point jurisdictions meant for the ward commissioners.

Those jurisdictions - issuing certificates of nationality, character, successors, birth and death, and assisting the authority during a census - would be exercized exclusively by the commissioners elected to the general seats, said the circular. Notably, mostly the male candidates contest the general seats.

The government circular also provided that the female commissioners would not have the right to chair the committees for law and order; they could only be advisers to the committees without having any executive functions. Clearly, the content of the government circular was infected with male chauvinistic attitude towards women.

Affected, and therefore aggrieved by the government circular, 10 female commissioners of the Khulna City Corporation, went to the High Court for redress. Hearing both the sides, the High Court ruled against the government.

"Once a person is elected a ward commissioner, be it from a general seat or from a reserved seat for women, he or she has to be treated the same way as all other commissioners, and there should not be any discrimination in allocation of the powers and functions of the commissioners", observed the court on August 16.

The women's rights organizations apart, many a liberal democratic groups comprising males and females found the court verdict a much-required whipping against the male-chauvinistic attitude of the state's executive wing, presently presided over by Khaleda Zia.

The attitude of the past government of Sheikh Hasina was no better. Because, the law providing the reserved seats for women on the local government bodies, which was made during Hasina's regime, resolved that the size of the constituencies for the seats for women commissioners would be three times larger than those of the general seats, which are usually contested by men.

The government of Khaleda Zia not only retained the discriminatory provision, it also made attempt to reduce the powers of the female commissioners, without taking into consideration the fact that a female commissioner represent an electorate which three times larger than that a male commissioner does.

Many in Dhaka believe that the court should have ruled, if necessary sue moto, against such discrimination against the candidates to the reserved seats for women as well. However, the second lashing of the judiciary came down on the executive's visibly deliberate dilly-dally about the implementation of a 13-point directive of the High Court to free especially the lower judiciary from the absolute control of the government.

Notably, the magistrates of lower judiciary in Bangladesh come from the administrative cadre of the government, who are accountable to the executive branch of the state.

The government, however, got a fresh breathing space for four months, as the court adjourned hearing on the petition for 18th extension till November 9 this year. It is now the turn of the government to prove whether there is a word called 'shame' in its dictionary or not.