Eliminate your own improprieties first: President to ACC
The president said the people’s confidence in the ACC will increase if they can establish the idea that no corrupt individual will go unpunished
President Abdul Hamid urged all Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) employees to show utmost impartiality and ethical behaviour in performing their duties.
"You have to eliminate your own irregularities and dishonesty before identifying the corruption of others and bringing them to justice. Those who abuse their responsibilities and the powers vested in them by the state must be strictly controlled and brought to justice through customary law," said the president at a programme organised yesterday by the ACC at Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy on the occasion of International Anti-Corruption Day.
The president said the people's confidence in the ACC will increase if they can firmly plant the idea that no corrupt individual will go unpunished.
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"Society should boycott the corrupt," was President Abdul Hamid's curt prescription to end corruption in Bangladesh.
"No man is born corrupt. Family, society and the surrounding environment have the greatest impact on human life. So, corrupt people should be socially boycotted," he said.
The president said corruption can be reduced only by socially evaluating honest, sincere, and devoted people.
"Human needs have limits, but greed is limitless. Corruption is an issue that has been prevalent in every society and no country in the world is completely free from its ill-effects," he said.
The president said it is not possible for the ACC alone to curb corruption unless an anti-graft sentiment is awakened socially.
Speaking as a special guest at the programme, Chief Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain said innocent persons should not be framed and corrupt people should be punished irrespective of their identity and power.
"We have not been able to become free from the grasp of corruption even in the year when we are celebrating the 50th year of our independence and the birth centenary of our Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, but it was his dream to build a country free of corruption," said the chief justice.
"When corruption-related news is published in the media, the perpetrators try to flee the country by any means, and sometimes they succeed. The commission cannot take steps promptly due to a lack of legal framework regarding the issue," he said.
