While addressing a public rally at Ashtagram in Kishoreganj, President Abdul Hamid said: "It is unfortunate that businessmen are controlling the country's politics today. This is the most disgraceful development. We must get rid of this trend". Recently, Transparency International, Bangladesh (TIB) observed that 57 per cent of Parliament Members were businessmen. In view of the TIB's and the President's concern at the growing number of businessmen in politics – which the latter considered "the most disgraceful development" – the innuendo is obvious: businessmen in politics are at the root of most evil in Bangladesh.

Since businessmen generate employment, growth and development; and aren't the only agents of corruption, let's not vent out all our anger and frustration to one direction, towards businessmen, and "businessmen-politicians". We know from our experience, traditional politicians and military rulers having known or unknown sources of income; high government officials; engineers / technocrats and professionals play the decisive roles in plundering national wealth through mega share scams, massive land grabbing, bank defaults, and hundreds of million-dollar bribe or "commission" extracted from donor-driven development projects, and purchase of (mostly unnecessary) military hardware from China, Russia and elsewhere, and by other means. 

Unaccountable and unethical politicians, with no known skills or general / professional qualifications or business background, and corrupt high government officials (some retired ones) have been the backbone of the monster of corruption in Bangladesh. And organized state-sponsored corrupt system ensures total impunity from punishment to the wrongdoers, and total unaccountability for the ruling classes while they are in power. Corrupt businessmen and "businessmen-politicians" just play the second fiddler.

Many "businessmen-politicians" first entered politics as relatives, cronies and musclemen of powerful politicians, and then they themselves became "businessmen" during the unsettled days of 1970s ad 1980s, under corrupt civilian and military rule. The process didn't stop with the fall of the corrupt Ershad regime in 1990. It's an ongoing process of upward mobility of corrupt relatives and clients as "businessmen", and "businessmen-politicians".  The new breeds of "businessmen" are very different from the old and established trading and industrialist families in Bangladesh. While the nouveau businessmen are mostly corrupt and opportunistic – they mostly support the ruling party – traditional businessmen in general are less corrupt and non-political by nature. So, imputing corruption and dysfunctional governance to an amorphous "businessmen-politician" category is anything but fair. 

What is plaguing the polity of Bangladesh is the state of almost total impunity for people in power, their patrons, associates, cronies and clients. The unaccountability of elected or unelected ruling elites, and government officials – including law-enforcers – is another impediment to good governance. We, however, can't single out any particular government or political party for the unofficial endorsement of impunity for criminals who are their "own people". Again, the state of unaccountability for ruling elites and partisan law-enforcers – who are cherry-picked by ruling elites from their "own people" – is not a new phenomenon. It started not long after the Liberation.

Now, how does one define the states of unaccountability and impunity? One may classify a government as unaccountable when it violates any well-defined constitutional provision, pays no heed to expert opinion, ruling by the Supreme Court, or even turn the entire judicial process subservient to the will of the executive. And the state of impunity implies "well-connected" people's impunity from arrests, trials and punishments for committing serious crimes, while others don't enjoy any such privilege; as if there are at least two sets of law for two different categories of people, one for the ruling elites and their cronies, and another for the rest of the population.  

Unfortunately, growing number of "well-connected" people are getting away with imaginable and unimaginable crimes on a regular basis. The list is too long to catalogue here. One single article in Bengali daily Prothom Alo (October 16, 2015) "Ora Beporwa Keno?" ["Why are they so reckless?"] catalogues more than 36 serious crimes committed by ruling party ministers, MPs, their relatives, and supporters during the last one year alone. The crimes include indiscriminate and selective killing of people; seriously injuring people by reckless driving under the influence of alcohol; drug trafficking by a sitting MP at Cox's Bazar; shooting of a child by a ruling party MP at Gaibandha; plundering of public and private assets by ruling party supporters; and killing of seven people at Narayanganj by a RAB official, who is also a son-in-law of a minister. 

One may list scores of other major crimes committed by ministers, MPs and their cronies in the recent past, including the infamous Padma-Bridge scandal, and a minister's personal secretary's involvement in literally carrying sacks full of cash in the middle of the night in the most suspicious manner in his private car. This episode is not that different from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, who also carried sacks full of money in the middle of the night. 

So, locating an easy scapegoat, the "businessman-politician" is no option at all. The problem of bad governance has nothing to do with some businessmen's entering the arena of politics – as MPs or ministers – but in the state of impunity and unaccountability the dysfunctional state ensures to the ruling party cronies and close associates / relatives of the ruling elite. Many of the so-called "businessmen-politicians" today are actually yesteryears' "wretched of the earth" pejoratively, not in the sense Frantz Fanon has used the expression. They mostly come from lower middle class (petty bourgeois) families of middle peasants; clerks; schoolteachers; and small traders linked with corrupt politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats, as relatives, clients or cronies.

Since the Constitution doesn't specify which categories of people, and how many from particular categories – lawyers, doctors, teachers, accountants, engineers, businessmen, peasants, fishermen, carpenters, and homemakers ("house-wives"), among others – are eligible to become MPs and ministers, it's unwarranted that we raise objections at "over-representation" of businessmen in politics. I personally won't mind if 100 per cent of politicians in Bangladesh are businessmen, accountants, engineers or lawyers. We may cite Deng Xiaoping in this regard: "It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice".

Good governance depends on good leaders, who are personally incorruptible, and are capable of leading and inspiring people to work together as equal citizens. So long as there is formal or informal recognition of the leaders as VIPs, and extraordinary privileges, such as free medical treatment abroad at the taxpayers' expenses, or even the "right" to drive by the wrong side of the road (quite common in Dhaka), good governance in Bangladesh will remain elusive. Special privileges, impunity and unaccountability of leaders, bureaucrats and law-enforcers are at the core of the problems of bad governance and dysfunctional state. 

Special power, privileges and exemptions for the rich and powerful imply an Orwellian "Animal Farm" – where some people are "more equal than the others" – or his Dystopia under the Big Brother. Bangladesh should worry about the growing influence of the Big Brother, not about the growing number of businessmen in politics.

The writer teaches security studies at Austin Peay State University. Sage has recently published his latest book, Global Jihad and America: The Hundred-Year War Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.