The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Bangladesh has serious problems with the anti-corruption and governance framework, with a significant gap between written anti-corruption law and actual implementation, said Global Integrity, an independent organisation tracking governance and corruption trends around the world.

"Government accountability (executive, legislative, judicial) and the civil service are all rated as very weak. Freedom of information is very limited and political financing is effectively unregulated," Managing Director Nathaniel Heller said in Global Integrity Report: 2007 released Wednesday.

The report identified Bangladesh's overall integrity indicators as 'week' while it find civil society, public information and media 'very weak', elections 'very weak', government accountability 'very weak', administration and civil service 'moderate', oversight and regulation 'weak', and anti-corruption and rule of law 'moderate'.

The report identified Bangladesh's civil society organisations strong, role of media moderate, public access to information very weak. It also finds voting and citizen participation strong, election integrity moderate and political financing very weak.

The Global Integrity found that Bangladesh's executive accountability very weak, legislative accountability very weak, judicial accountability very weak and budget processes moderate. It also found civil service regulations very weak, whistle-blowing measures moderate, procurement process strong and privatisation procedure very strong.

The non-profit organisation also identified the role of Bangladesh's national ombudsman very weak, supreme audit institution moderate, taxes and customs moderate, state-owned enterprises very weak and business licensing and regulation weak. It also finds anti-corruption law very strong, anti-corruption agency strong, rule of law weak and law enforcement very weak.

The report assessed anti-corruption mechanisms and government accountability in 55 countries.

In a press release GI said, "Although elections are often touted as the linchpin of governance reform efforts around the world, a new report finds long-term benefits offered by elections are often undermined by a lack of government accountability and the absence of strong anti-corruption mechanisms."

"We have to stop using elections as a simplistic litmus test for a government's commitment to democracy," Nathaniel Heller said.

"We now know there is little linkage between elections and the much tougher reforms that must be made, especially in countries at political crossroads such as Pakistan, Ukraine, Georgia, and Kenya."

"China's lack of strong anti-corruption mechanisms could soon be to foreign investment what sub prime mortgages have been to the US economy," stated Heller.

The report said the US and other G8 countries suffer from many of the same corruption challenges as developing countries, especially in election and campaign financing. While many observers tend to assume that wealthier countries have developed to a point where corruption is no longer a problem, Global Integrity's 2007 data for the United States, France, Italy, Japan, and Canada paints a decidedly different picture.

Poor ratings for several close allies of the United States highlight the challenges the U.S. faces in promoting democratic reforms in countries where it has competing security interests. The report found that countries like Pakistan and Georgia posted 'weak' or 'very weak' ratings for many of the anti-corruption, accountability and transparency indicators.

A widespread lack of government accountability among foreign aid recipients presents serious dilemmas for Western and multilateral aid agencies. Despite a growing awareness by aid donors of the need to direct aid to non-governmental stakeholders, like civil society groups, aid agencies continue working primarily with the very same executive branches that are often hindering democratic reforms.