| 08 March 2005 | Tuesday | 26 Muharram 1426 |
BD's parliament fails to ensure govt's accountability
She has not buckled under adversity- the worst kind of experience a woman can go through. She stands tall, challenging those very people who humiliated her. The verdict passed on March 4, by the Multan bench of the Lahore High Court, acquitting five of the six charged with raping her, has not shaken her confidence in justice. "I have faith that justice will be done, even if that means I have to fight till death," says a determined Mai.
The 32-year-old woman's introduction to the world is that of a victim who was gang raped on June 22, 2002, on the directives of a village panchayat (council) in revenge for her brother's alleged involvement with a woman of a powerful clan of Meerwala Jatoi, a village in southern Punjab. But she refuses to be introduced as a victim.
"I am a survivor, a fighter and will not spend my life pitying myself for what happened to me three years ago. The incident taught me to be self-reliant and not blame destiny.
My faith in Allah has become even stronger. I will take my appeal to the Supreme Court. If that fails I know the highest court of Allah will do justice. He will punish those responsible for my physical humiliation. Please, pray for me," Mukhtar Mai speaks with a conviction derived from spiritual strength.
This is how she wants the world, and the electronic and print media to see her. Strong and unbroken, she does not blame anyone, least of all the people who stood by silently as onlookers, fearing for their lives. "I don't blame them because they have to live in the same village. And the men who raped me are very powerful. I have drawn great strength from all those who have supported me in my cause. I want women to show courage and not let their physical weakness become an excuse to suffer," says Mukhtar Mai.
One lesson she says she has learnt is not to live the life of a victim. She believes that an unfortunate incident should not be allowed to ruin your life. "Life's a gift to be made use of and I'm not going to spend the rest of it in tears," says the woman.
In tears she definitely is not. During the interview she laughs about not being able to speak Urdu fluently. "I'm not going to laugh at your Punjabi because my Urdu is not good," chuckled Mukhtar Mai.
Mukhtar Mai's melodious Seraiki intonation contrasts with the savagery of her ordeal. "I've become stubborn now. That's how I have dealt with the situation. It has taken me two years to recover from it. No, not recover, but change the direction of my emotions.
At first I would cry whenever someone from the village passed a remark. For days I would keep on crying, which I realized was going to take me nowhere. Now I try not to cry," Mukhtar said.
Second amongst seven brothers and sisters (five sisters and two brothers), Mukhtar's family is very supportive of her. But her father, earning a living by making furniture in Meerwala, is not in a financially strong position to seek justice for her daughter.
"My lawyer was appointed by the government. We wouldn't have been able to pay the court's fee," says Mukhtar. Besides, nobody ever in Meerwala had dared to register an FIR against the strong Mastoi tribe. "Nobody had the courage to report their excesses to the police. They are rich and powerful and people are afraid of them," discloses Mukhtar.
Mukhtar Mai is also the first woman in Meerwala Jatoi to establish a primary school for girls. The compensation money of Rs500,000 she received from the government was spent on building that school. "I didn't know what to do with the money I was given and asked the government to help me in setting up a primary school."
The school built on government land provides education to 250 girls up to class five. Talking with enthusiasm about the school, Mukhtar Mai says it is her dream to upgrade it to the middle level and eventually to high school. "What good is education till class five? Girls should at least have a matric."
In between her court hearings she finds time to study, teach the Quran to girls and spend what is left of her time in sewing and making parandaas. "I have started studying and have passed class three exam. Hopefully, one day I'll be a matriculate," says an optimistic Mukhtar Mai.
BD's parliament fails to ensure govt's accountability
If the 'function of parliament is to control the government', as British political scientist Anthony H. Birch argues, the Jatiya Sangsad (national parliament) of Bangladesh has not lived up to its obligation.
The Berlin-based corruption watchdog, Transparency International (TI), observed last week that Bangladesh's parliament has not been assertive enough to keep the executive on its toes.
The report goes on to lament that the absence of strong parliamentary traditions in the country is surprising given that the first legislature in Dhaka took shape as far back as in 1862.
The TI's 'Parliament Watch' report, released in Dhaka on March 1, covers four sessions of parliament in 2004. It rightly depicts a gloomy picture of parliamentary practices.
The report shows that the legislature had only 83 working days in the entire 2004 _ far below the minimum number of working days for parliaments in the United Kingdom, India, Canada or Australia.
Understandably, the government feels more comfortable with the situation because it saves it from accountability. In a democracy, it is common knowledge, the role of the opposition is crucial to making the government answerable to the electorate. But in Bangladesh, the opposition's Performance has been pathetic so far.
According to the report, the Awami League, the largest opposition party, remained absent from the House on 48 working days out of a total of 83 in 2004. The performance of the present ruling party, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was no different from the Awami League when the former was in opposition.
The TI report says the attendance record exposes the legislators' lack of seriousness. The House was able to start its business on time only on three working days out of the 83 it met last year due to quorum problem. A presence of only 60 MPS (the parliamnet's strength is 300), Constitutes quorum.
The report also shows that the average presence of the opposition MPs, of course when not on boycott of parliament sessions, is better than that of the Treasury bench members.
"Some 45 per cent of the Treasury bench members remain absent from the House on a regular basis," the study observed. The regular functioning of the parliamentary standing committees on different ministries remains one of the effective ways of making the government accountable to the parliament.
The Rules of Procedure of Jatiya Sangsad obliges the committees to hold at least one meeting every month. But the Transparency report shows as many as eight such committees did not hold a single meeting in eight months between January and August of last year.
Six committees held only one meeting over the period. Only one committee, out of 39, held regular meeting every month. The prime minister's weekly 'question hour' is considered another effective way of making the governance transparent and the executive accountable.
The Prime Minister of Bangladesh, who is the head of the state's executive wing, is scheduled to answer directly to the questions of the MPs on Wednesdays. The four sessions of the parliament that took place in 2004, witnessed a total of 19 Wednesdays, but the Prime Minister remained absent in the House during the question time on six Wednesdays.
However, the Speaker approved a total of 95 questions to be answered by the Prime Minister on 19 Wednesdays. But she answered directly only 41 questions, with some supplementary ones, while the printed answers were distributed to the MPs, depriving them of the scope to raise supplementary questions on the issues concerned.
What is more tricky was that as many as 37 questions, out of the 41 answered, were raised by the ruling party lawmakers, hinting clearly that the Chair saved the Prime Minister from facing difficult questions that are usually raised by the members of the opposition bench.
The situation as regards the regular one-hour question-answer session, meant for the ministers to answer the questions of the MPs every day is no different. Some 90 per cent of the questions were being asked by the MPs belonging to the BNP-led four-party ruling alliance.
The parliament witnessed the passage of 30 government Bills in 2004. Of them, 13.3 per cent were related to decentralisation of local government, 13.3 per cent related to reforms of judiciary and justice delivery system, 10 per cent on dispute resolution, 10 per cent related to institutional reforms, 10 per cent finance and commerce, 3.3 per cent concerning reduction of corruption and 3.3 per cent related to the rights of women and children.
In the process of the passage of the bills, the opposition MPs moved dozens of amendments, but none of them was entertained by the Treasury bench or the government for that matter.
The situation was similar in all previous sessions, justifying the common man's disillusionment with the political process. The average Bangladeshi now feels that democracy is merely a 'tyranny of the majority'.