Pakistan: The corruption furore

EDITORIAL:DAILY TIMES

A furore has broken out about corruption charges against politicians across the board. The NAB chief, Admiral (retd) Fasih Bokhari, has exploded a bombshell by endorsing the figure for daily corruption first put forward by Transparency International (TI) of Rs seven billion per day. Whereas the TI figure was based more on surveys of perceptions than any concrete facts, the good Admiral seems to have a little more wind in his sails when he claims the country is losing Rs seven billion per day due to tax evasion and another Rs 6-7 billion because of direct corruption at both the federal and provincial levels, based he says, on the TI surveys, government and regulators’ reports, proceedings of the Public Accounts Committee, tax collection departments’ input and NAB’s own assessment of mega projects. None of the data that could back up such sweeping generalisations has so far been presented by the Admiral, whose initial estimate has now almost doubled, casting a shadow of doubt about the findings. Irrespective of the government and the opposition’s reactions to the allegations, a number of questions have arisen because of the Admiral’s actions. First and foremost, is it the NAB’s mandate to be indulging in such kite-flying? NAB is charged with going after specific corruption cases, not indulging in dubious ‘research’. Second, as a department of the government, should the NAB chief not have gone to the government with his ‘findings’ instead of creating a controversy by going public on shaky foundations? Last but not least, the timing of his assertions on the eve of the general elections leaves one scratching one’s head as to the purpose or intent behind this ‘bombshell’. Irrespective of the Admiral’s fulminations or his intent, all he has managed to do is feed into a general perception that corruption exists, the quantity remaining difficult to pin down by the very nature of the phenomenon, which afflicts all tiers and levels of the state, from the lowest rung to the highest. However, perception is not proof. It has to be substantiated by concrete evidence. Sweeping statements are no substitute for what is arguably a serious affliction state and society are suffering from. Feeling targeted, the political class has felt more affronted than responded responsibly. If the political class has been put in the dock on the issue of not filing income tax returns, although some of the names being touted have refuted the allegation, the response expected from our elected representatives is that they behave like responsible holders of elected office and plug any gaps that exist in this regard. There are other issues with the current furore. It appears on the surface that the various authors of the corruption reports see ‘evil’ only in the political class. Their omissions are even more significant than those they name. Have they ‘declared’ the military and bureaucracy squeaky clean in focusing only on politicians? Anyone even superficially acquainted with Pakistan’s history will find it difficult to deny the role these institutions have played in siphoning off state resources, in the case of the military, involving big ticket defence purchases paid for by the sweat and labour of the citizen. About the bureaucracy and the lower judiciary, the less said the better. All the surveyors and purveyors of this pseudo-science needed to do was talk to a representative sample of the citizenry and they would have come away better educated about the phenomenon of corruption and the spread of its tentacles through the entire governance structures of the country. Last but by no means the least, some probing questions need to be asked before we get swept away in a frenzy in another dubious controversy. Is corruption universal or confined? Increasingly, the answer may well be that it is tending towards the former. Did corruption begin only now? This is patently a false and ahistorical perception. Corruption has been around a long time, arguably since independence, and the fact that it has grown in depth and reach suggests it is not about to go away any time soon. The tendency of the military to use its periods in power or even in between as license to manoeuvre benefits, the bureaucracy to permanently have its hand in the till, the political class to incrementally treat public office as a means of private gain, all these have acquired unstoppable traction over time. Adding to this sorry picture is the ethos of unbridled capitalism, which glorifies getting rich by any and all means, including the crooked. Unfortunately, the mud-slinging over corruption, past victimisation of political opponents in the name of accountability, and the lack of any meaningful measures to halt the growing trend means that, especially at this juncture when the country stands poised on the brink of a historic democratic transition, the whole furore is unlikely to turn out to be more than a red herring when juxtaposed against the even more serious challenges facing the country.