‘New Bangladesh’: Anti-Corruption, Democracy and Good Governance

Context

The anti-discrimination movement of students demanding quota reform in government jobs led to the fall of the authoritarian government. This was achieved at the cost of unprecedented loss of lives and sacrifice. An Interim Government was formed on 8 August 2024. The principal expectation of the protesting students and common people from this government is to create a state structure and environment suitable for building a transparent, accountable, corruption-free and discrimination-free ‘New Bangladesh’.

The earlier regime maintained its autocratic rule through abuse of power essentially to ensure multi-dimensional corruption, misappropriation of state resources and money laundering with impunity and beyond accountability. The main focus of state reform and national political settlement in the ‘New Bangladesh’ should be on uprooting corruption and abuse of power with impunity. To achieve this goal, in addition to radical reform of all institutions responsible for preventing and controlling corruption, it is essential to create a conducive environment for the active participation of all stakeholders, including the media, and the common people, especially the youth, to strengthen the demand for good governance and anti-corruption. However, it would be impossible to effectively control corruption without first liberating the entire state governance structure from ‘party politics’ and professional bankruptcy. Radical changes are needed in public representation, government and administrative systems and practices so that the state is governed based on the people’s verdict, delegated powers and accountability to the people.

Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) proposes the following recommendations for the necessary reforms in the state structure to prevent corruption and establish democracy, good governance and integrity in the country. Captured in nine strategic themes the proposed recommendations relate to reforms at the overall strategic and policy-making level.

Immediate Priorities

• Ensuring law and order, public safety and administrative stability;
• Bringing those who are directly and indirectly responsible for flagrant human rights violations, including unprecedented loss of life, under national and international accountability measures with formal participation of the United Nations. Due process of law must be followed to ensure that the judicial process remains beyond question;
• Ensuring normalcy economic activities;
• Creating a task force consisting of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), Bangladesh Financial Investigation Unit (BFIU), National Board of Revenue (NBR), Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and Attorney General’s office to set a practical example of effective accountability for high-level corruption and money laundering;
• Publishing the interim government’s strategic guidelines for building the essential framework of state reforms to achieve the vision of a ‘New Bangladesh’.

For full policy brief see below.