Using a Truth Commission to fix the corruption problem is like using a hammer to remove screws.

HM (His Majesty) Ershad has a little piece on the Truth Commission in Daily Star today which is wayyyyy off base, though it somehow meanders its way to a sensible conclusion. ANM Nurul Haque has a pretty good piece which is worth checking out - though he doesn’t raise the issue raised by my analogy above.

I am glad to see that there is some talk of the place of plea bargains. I raised the plea bargains as a possibility for flexible decision-making under the umbrella of the rule of law months ago, as regular readers of the blog will recall (see those posts here and here).  The plea bargaining idea does deserve some thought.

Plea bargains will mean prosecutorial independence, and prosecutorial independence immediately raises the question of accountability. Prosecutorial independence will make sense only if accompanied by some robust way to keep the prosecutor accountable. We keep coming back to the same issue of accountability again and again, and my fear - based on what we have seen so far - is that those in power thinking about this issue don’t really have a handle on it.