IT IS perhaps indicative of the general disregard of the incumbents to the concept of accountability that there is no database of assurances made in parliament by the prime minister and cabinet members of the incumbent Awami League-led government. According to a report published in New Age on Tuesday, with less than six months to go before the ninth Jatiya Sangsad completes its tenure, there is yet to be any comprehensive statistics on the assurances made by the current prime minister and her cabinet colleagues. While the ministries were expected to keep the records of the assurances made in the house, their officials hardly attended any parliamentary sessions — another glaring absence of accountability. In such circumstances, the parliamentary committee on public assurances has initiated a move to create a database and thus far managed to trace around 2,000 assurances made by the prime minister and her cabinet colleagues in the past four years and a half, although it could not find details of how or when these would be implemented.
The parliamentary committee indeed deserves praise for the initiative; after all, the planned database would provide points of reference to weigh the words of the ministers against their deeds, and thus could usher in some degree of accountability. However, the abundance of broken promises and unaddressed assurances by the ministers of the incumbent government and, for that matter, the preceding ones, apparently points to a deeper malaise that afflicts the political class, especially those in charge of the executive branch of the state — deception. When the prime minister or any of her colleagues makes a promise to a lawmaker in parliament, e.g. for construction of culverts in his or her constituency, they ultimately make the promise to the people of the constituency. In other words, by not living up to their commitment made in parliament, the ministers are actually defaulting on their promises to the people. Regrettably, however, over the years, ministers seem to have made making empty promises to the lawmakers, and thus the people, a habit of sort. In fact, it may even seem that ministers only come up with assurances to the lawmakers just for the sake of it. For example, in the eighth parliament, different ministers of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led government made 1,079 commitment; only 326 were implemented.
Most importantly, it seems that lawmakers themselves have done precious little to call the ministers to account, which they are ordained by the constitution and mandated by the people to do. Surely, the lawmakers that one minister or the other made the assurances to could have kept note and effectively followed up on the assurances. That they did not or do not still only suggest that they may also have taken it for granted that most of the commitments made by the ministers to them, and to the people by them, would ultimately not be implemented.
Overall, it increasingly seems that the executive and the legislature have entered into an unwritten covenant that the latter would not try to hold the former accountable for its words and deeds, and that both would thus playact with public assurances to ultimately fool the people. It is thus imperative for people at large, especially the informed and conscious sections of society, to categorically demand answers from their minister and lawmakers for the mockery that they have made public assurances into.