Should Foreign Courts have the ability to effectively disqualify Bangladeshi MPs?

A criminal court in Kuwait convicted a sitting Bangladeshi Member of Parliament on 28 January 2021 and sentenced him to four years. On 22 February the Parliament Secretariat issued a gazette declaring his seat vacant, and on 8 June the High Court Division summarily rejected a writ petition challenging it.

Article 66(2)(d) of the Constitution disqualifies a person convicted of an offence involving moral turpitude and sentenced to at least two years. The gazette treated a Kuwaiti conviction as engaging it.

Whether the provision was ever intended to operate on foreign judgments is the question this piece raises. Reading it that way means the composition of the national legislature can be altered by the criminal courts of another state, with no scrutiny of that state’s procedural standards, no requirement of reciprocity and no domestic recognition process standing in between. A conviction in a jurisdiction whose fair-trial guarantees differ materially from Bangladesh’s would operate exactly as one obtained at home.

The piece raises the problem rather than resolving it. It remains open.