Another aspect of the situation that seems to have escaped the attention of Ms. Anam and Ayesha Jalal is the corrosive effect of democracy on the judiciary, the last bastion of the individual against despotic government.
According to Jean Lipmen-Blumen, one characteristic destructive behaviour of toxic leaders includes "Subverting those structures and processes of the system intended to generate truth, justice and excellence and engaging in unethical, illegal and criminal acts (The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians - and How We Can Resist Them (Oxford: Oxford University Press) p 20)." Clearly, interfering with the judiciary constitutes such behavior.
We have already seen how the line between the judiciary and the executive was erased by the Chief Justice himself when he became president in 1990.
In a conversation in the early 1990s, B B Roy Chowdhury, then a judge on the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, told me, "He [General Ershad] never interfered with the judiciary." Ershad routinely used to lose case after case, but never tried to influence the judges.
Packing the courts became routine under the elected governments. "There is a history of politically stigmatized appointments to the highest judiciary as well as ignoring the recommendations of the Chief Justice, either partially or wholly by the government of the day," proclaimed an editorial in the Daily Star (August 25, 2006).
In 2007, Chief Justice M. Ruhul Amin claimed that it would take twenty years to deliver the judiciary from the effects of appointing judges on the basis of "political considerations" (The Bangladesh Observer, May 1, 2007).
But the undoing of the judiciary occurred in 1996. Sheikh Mujib, we will recall, was killed by army officers. A grateful nation heaped honours on the assassins, and conferred immunity against future persecution. This immunity was lifted in 1996 when Mujib's daughter, Sheikh Hasina, became prime minister. The lower judiciary sentenced the men to death by firing squad- there is no provision for execution by firing squad in the laws - hoping no doubt to ingratiate itself to the prime minister.
The higher judiciary proved less pliable.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
