Editorial
Faizee's resignation should have come earlier
His conduct needs to be fully gone into
Faisal Mahmud Faizee's decision to quit the position of a judge of the High Court may be greeted by some with a sense of relief. That, however, does not obscure the fact that the resignation has come rather too late in the day to merit our or anyone else's sympathy. The reason is plain and simple: Justice Faizee ought to have left office earlier without allowing so much controversy to well up around the issue of whether or not he was morally entitled to hold such a responsible position as a judge of the High Court once the Syndicate of Chittagong University cancelled his LL.B certificate. Indeed, Faizee in his resignation appears to have accused others of spreading propaganda against him instead of acknowledging his own role in the making of the crisis. Indeed question has already arisen as to whether he resigned just a couple of days before the sitting of the Supreme Judicial Council to avoid facing them. The controversial judge's resignation cannot be seen as a conclusive end to all the necessary, uncomfortable questions that have been raised about his legal antecedents in recent weeks. His resignation should not preclude a full and comprehensive inquiry into his judicial conduct by the Supreme Judicial Council. With the uproar caused by allegations of a tampering with his LL.B marksheets, it was expected that swift remedial action would be taken on the matter. That expectation is still there; and we understand that investigations into the LL.B certificate scandal are going to be taken up at the Anti-Corruption Commission. The sanctity of the judiciary demands that all the details of the Faizee story be made public. It pains us to recount yet once more the old story of the politicisation of institutions resorted to by the now-departed BNP-led alliance government. Indeed, one of the more disturbing acts of that government was the appointment of some judges allegedly on political considerations. Faizee's happened to be one of those appointments. We recall in this context the remarks of the then law minister Moudud Ahmed, who reportedly stated that he did not know many of the judges that were appointed. That as also the fact that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was reportedly ignored when some appointments were made certainly amounted to a break with the time-honoured tradition of consulting the Chief Justice on such issues. Today, the judiciary needs to highlight a very positive image of itself. In circumstances where a separation of the judiciary from the executive has become a significant question, it is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who is eminently equipped to lead the judiciary to the peaks where it is supposed to be. Can't the Chief Justice initiate a cleansing process? Let that journey be undertaken now that we are talking of reforms in every field.
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