Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) today termed the 12th parliamentary election as a one-sided one that was staged to appear competitive, and said it was an "ominous sign" for the country's democracy and the future of elections.

At a press conference in its office, TIB unveiled the primary findings of their study on the January 7 polls. They conducted the study in 50 out of 300 constituencies.

In this election, 100 percent of the Awami League candidates have violated the electoral code of conduct at least once, said TIB, an international anti-corruption institution.

Candidates of other parties as well as independent candidates were not far behind in this regard, it said.

Ninety-eight percent of the candidates spent more than the maximum expenditure limit of Tk 25 lakh in the election, found TIB.

TIB Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman said, "The one-sided election was successfully held as a strategy to stay in power. The legitimacy of the election may not be challenged, but this success will forever be questioned by the standards of political integrity, democracy and morality.

"The precondition for ensuring a free, participatory, neutral and equal field of competition were not fulfilled in the 12th parliamentary election," he said.

According to TIB research, candidates had spent an average of Tk 1,56,83,777 in the election, which is more than six times the expenditure limit.

The ruling Awami League won 223 out of 298 declared seats in the January 7 polls.

After Bangladesh's journey began on the path to becoming a modern democracy in 1991, many expected that electoral democracy would gain a strong footing gradually. But that hope and aspiration stumbled for the first slip at the infamous Magura-2 parliamentary by-polls on March 20, 1994. It became a symbol of a rigged election in the era of democracy, which seemed to have been restored after Ershad's autocratic regime came crashing down.

That by-election brought two issues to the fore: that a free and fair election was not possible under a partisan government, and that the Election Commission was not free at all under a political government. The by-polls helped the Awami League-led opposition parties of that time to intensify their campaign for the introduction of a non-partisan, election-time government.

In the face of a strong campaign launched by the opposition, a caretaker government provision was introduced in the constitution and, subsequently, four national elections were held under non-partisan caretaker governments. Those elections were, by and large, free from the controversy of vote-rigging and ballot-stuffing. But the caretaker government system was annulled from the constitution following a court verdict. And we saw a resumption of the old tactics of vote rigging, with polling centres being run over by party cadres, ousting of polling agents, stuffing and snatching of ballot boxes, and intimidation of voters.

Then came the two controversial national elections of 2014 and 2018. While the BNP boycotted the 2014 election, the 2018 election saw 153 ruling-party-aligned candidates elected uncontested amid widespread allegations of irregularities. There were allegations that ballot boxes were stuffed the night before the election, and the opposition camp lost the election even before voting had begun.

In recent times, we have also witnessed voter turnouts gradually declining, which is surely an ominous sign for democracy.

After around three decades, if we look back at that fateful by-election of Magura, we would realise that the situation has not changed much. It happened again at the Gaibandha-5 by-election. The issue of by-elections came into discussion once again when seven BNP lawmakers – the only BNP candidates who had managed to win in 2018 – resigned. After their resignation, the Election Commission announced the election schedule, and the ruling Awami League and the main opposition in parliament, the Jatiya Party, nominated their respective candidates. But the Brahmanbaria-2 by-poll stole the show as a former BNP leader (after having been expelled from his party), Ukil Abdus Sattar, contested the election as an independent candidate.

Sattar had been elected five times from the constituency and had been state minister as a technocrat. His loyalty to the party was unquestionable. Following an order from the party high command, he had resigned from parliament, but made a surprise turn-around as he decided to contest the by-election as an independent candidate, in turn getting himself expelled from the BNP. The belief held in his constituency is that Sattar is contesting the polls for two reasons – first, he was trapped by the government and second, out of fear that he would not get the party ticket for the next election as he is over 83 years old.

Another reason is that BNP leader Rumeen Farhana has a high probability of getting the party nomination in the next election from that constituency. For Sattar, his political future is almost ending. Many in the constituency have also said that it is actually Sattar's son who is trying to "make his future" through this by-election.

This particular by-election attracted further attention when all three ruling Awami League aspirants – it was open to anyone interested to run – withdrew their candidacy following the directions of party high-ups. It turned out to be a cakewalk for Sattar. On AL's part, it was presumably a good gesture to let a senior politician of the opposing camp have a last hurrah, since he is most likely at the twilight of a long and distinguished career. However, it is so rare that this incident is certain to go down in history as a very likely one-off where the ruling party favoured an opposition candidate.

The ruling Awami League has repeatedly said that the next election will be a free, fair, and inclusive one. BNP sent a strong message through the resignation of its lawmakers, saying that it was not making empty threats when saying that the party would not join any elections under the incumbent government. And Awami League appeared to have countered this with a tactic of sending a message to BNP aspirants, saying they might get an open field if they break away and run during the elections. Then, Awami League could claim the elections to be inclusive and also be certain of retaining office.

It is often said that in politics, there is no last word. Through Sattar's participation, the ruling Awami League will try to prove a few things, particularly that BNP's decision to resign from the parliament was wrong, and will send a message to BNP leaders and aspirants that they may have a chance in the next polls if they betray their party and create a few cracks in what has so far remained steadfast determination. It is perhaps BNP's biggest achievement of the last 15 years that the party remained intact, with none of its stalwarts breaking away. But Sattar's election may have an impact.

But one must wonder whether this move was indeed a good strategy for the ruling party. Is politics just a voting game? Should there not be moral or ideological practices in politics? After all, the one thing politicians must keep in mind is that once someone is labelled as a traitor, it hangs around their neck like the fabled albatross.

BNP had to rig the Magura by-polls in 1994 to back their claim that their popularity had not decreased. Three decades later, the AL took on a different strategy and let an independent candidate win to coax out aspirants from BNP's fold. In 1994, although BNP won the polls, it was defeated in politics. The Awami League might console itself with a self-congratulatory chuckle thanks to Sattar's victory. It might almost seem that the Awami League has manipulated a win in the first skirmish. But will such a stratagem or tactic win them the war?

Mohammad Al-Masum Molla is deputy chief reporter at The Daily Star.

Another year of missed opportunities ends with hardly any specific progress to effectively prevent and control corruption, which continues to cause endless harm to the state and to our society. 

High-level pledges against corruption continued to be reiterated in 2022, as in the past several years. Soon after taking over, on January 2, the Chief Justice of Bangladesh compared corruption with cancer, and called for zero tolerance for it. Later, at a seminar on National Mourning Day, he stressed on resisting and rejecting corruption as a means to ensuring justice. And on Constitution Day, he reminded us that corruption adversely affects democracy, weakens the foundation of the state, antagonises the people and causes rage among them. 

This anti-corruption narrative from the highest echelon of justice not only echoed the prime minister's frequently reiterated commitment towards zero tolerance against corruption and of sparing no one (including those in her own party), but also represented the responsiveness of the judiciary to ever-growing public suffering and frustration as a result of deepening and widening corruption. 

On August 17, the PM, at a meeting with secretaries of the government, called for tough action against anyone involved. Echoing her, at a seminar on International Anti-Corruption Day, the president also called for exemplary punishment for the corrupt, irrespective of their political identity. 

Meanwhile, Bangladesh continued to be ranked poorly by nearly every credible governance- and corruption-related international indices, like those on WJP's Rule of Law, Regulatory Quality Indicator, Government Effectiveness, Political Stability, Voice and Accountability, Press Freedom, Political Rights, Civil Liberties, Corruption Control, Bribery Risk Matrix and the Corruption Perception Index (CPI). According to the latest CPI, in fact, Bangladesh scored only 26 out of 100, way below the global average of 43. We remained the second worst performer in South Asia after Afghanistan. 

Institutional ineffectiveness is among the main reasons for our failure to improve our performance in the aforementioned indices. The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) continued to face challenges of trust and credibility on whether it can even-handedly deliver its core mandate of effectively controlling corruption beyond the small fries, and hold to account bigger fish. The ACC's credibility took on another negative dimension around the controversial dismissal of one of its investigation officers, whose annual performance assessment was consistently high-grade. It happened against the backdrop of his courageous investigation against some key syndicates of grand corruption in Chattogram and Cox's Bazar. It caused a large section of ACC staff to resort to unprecedented acts of protest for their rights, including job security. The incident also reinforced concerns about the ACC's seriousness of purpose, governance challenges, and organisational effectiveness.

Though hard to concretely measure, the cost of corruption in Bangladesh is staggeringly high, amounting to at least two to three percent of GDP, as informed by the then finance minister in 2015. Corruption, grand or petty, is also discriminatory and a major impediment to inclusive development. This was a key finding of the National Household Survey on Corruption released by Transparency International Bangladesh on August 31, 2022. Nearly 71 percent of the respondents of the survey experienced corruption, and 72.1 percent of victims had to pay bribes to access public services. 

The burden of bribery, in terms of proportion of annual income, is seven times higher on lower-income households compared to their higher-income peers. The rate of victimisation of corruption among rural households was significantly higher, at 46.5 percent, than the rate for those in urban areas at 36.6 percent. 

The discriminatory nature of corruption is further manifested in the victimisation of households headed by persons with disabilities, as 80.3 percent of such households were victims of corruption, compared to the national average of 70.6 percent. 

The year 2022 brought corruption's distributive injustices into sharper focus while also exposing corruption-induced macroeconomic fragility, especially in the banking and financial sectors, which have been pushed to the brink of collapse by a triangular trap of loan forgery, tax evasion, and money laundering. 

The massive embezzlement involving Islami Bank, together with several others, pointed to the mountain of dirty games of collusive fraud that has been allowed to become part of the bank loan culture. 

Hardly any of the kingpins of these scandals, who most often use fake and anonymous entities as their key enablers, have been brought to account. The beneficial owners – who own, control, and profit from such secretive companies and shadowy bank accounts – secure loans to never repay, but mainly to launder. Instead of being subjected to justice, beneficiaries of this dirty game have secured lobbying power for themselves to the extent of policy capture to extort even more concessions.

The year also saw unprecedented privileges granted to money launderers when the national budget for FY 2022-23 made a provision to "bring back" illicitly accumulated wealth and overseas income without any question. This was a self-defeating, immoral, discriminatory, unconstitutional, and corruption-conducive enticement, and an example of ridiculing the high profile pledges of zero tolerance against corruption. 

The amount of annual illicit outflow of money from Bangladesh, even by the most conservative estimate, is at least three times higher than the USD 4.5 billion of IMF loan that the government negotiated to be receivable in 42 months, which is not only repayable with interest but also compromises our policy autonomy. Ironically, it is well within the reach of the government to make such loans redundant if it had the political will and institutional capacity to even moderately prevent money laundering. 

The institutions authorised to control crime and repatriate stolen assets (by enforcing relevant laws and taking advantage of available avenues of international cooperation) have been evasive at best. Their energy appears to be invested more on disputing the reported data on money laundering and critics thereof. 

On October 26, 2022, the High Court rebuked the ACC for failing to take concrete actions against money laundering and recover laundered money. 

The first official recognition of the massive problem of trade-based money laundering appeared when, at a media briefing on November 15, Bangladesh Bank (BB) officials disclosed that a special audit had detected illicit financial transfers out of the country through 20 to 200 percent misinvoicing by importers and exporters. Half a month later, the BB governor mentioned nearly a hundred such unnamed cases of misinvoicing in the month of July 2022 alone. 

It clearly took the central bank the unprecedented foreign exchange crisis (driven by the Covid pandemic) and the Ukraine war to wake up. Nothing is known, though, of any actions to be taken to prevent and control this long-nourished practice of invoice manipulation in import and export businesses to illegally transfer massive amounts of foreign currency abroad and evade taxes – a phenomenon which is neither unknown to relevant authorities nor takes place without the collusion of sections of relevant officials. 

Unlike well over 120 countries, including some of our neighbours, Bangladesh remains evasive about adopting the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) for automatic exchange of information on banking transactions, which could facilitate live tracking within and across borders. By adopting CRS we could have taken our starving revenue system and anti-money laundering efforts to a more effective level. 

Similarly, there appears to be no interest from authorities to ensure beneficial ownership transparency, which could be a powerful tool to salvage the banking sector from the brink of collapse. Will the government have the political courage to undertake such badly needed reforms, in a context where the policy regime continues to be possessed by beneficiaries and protectors of loan defaulting, tax evasion, and money laundering?

Dr Iftekharuzzaman is executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh.