Corruption Plagues Pakistan

The chief actors involved in the game of power politics and corrupt practices are politicians, bureaucrats, judges, retired generals and the powerful industrialists — all of them thrive on nepotism, corruption, discrimination and on the cartel and monopolies leaving the poor in the lurch — to live in midst of unparalleled difficulties and untold sufferings

Thursday, October 01, 2009

The allegations and counter- allegations by the stakeholders plunged deep in the game of politics is causing blistering headaches to the millions of poverty-ridden people of Pakistan. Good governance, the development’s backbone in a democratic society, is sadly missing. The people’s expectations after long military rule lie crushed. After the death of Quaid-i-Azam, corruption has entrenched deep in our society with its fangs — bribery, hoarding, nepotism, and jobbery flourishing since the last six decades. Despondency prevails among the people. With no powerful accountability cell, rule of law, incentives to the poor and the middle class, the nation’s future remains bleak. Amid this horrid picture, Pakistan politics faces a mysterious situation, a jigsaw, difficult to decipher, with total confusion with even the electronic media coming under the grinder.

The politicians are making statements out of spite to cover their skin of the wrongs committed in the past and shamelessly continuing their nefarious trade even today. The picture painted on mere hollow, rhetoric pledges mean little in practice. Shockingly, they remain unabashed at their corrupt tactics and point fingers at their opponents. The chief actors involved in the game of power politics and corrupt practices are politicians, bureaucrats, judges, retired generals and the powerful industrialists — all of them thrive on nepotism, corruption, discrimination and on the cartel and monopolies leaving the poor in the lurch — to live in midst of unparalleled difficulties and untold sufferings.

Let’s recall Quaid’s words on corruption
Father of the Nation Quaid-i-Azam Muhammed Ali Jinnah while addressing the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan in Karachi on August 11, 1947 on the curse of corruption said: “One of the biggest curses is bribery and corruption. That really is a poison. We must put that down with an iron hand. Blackmarketing is another curse. A citizen who does blackmarketing, commits, I think, a greater crime than the biggest and most grievous of crimes. These blackmarketeers ought to be very severely punished, because the entire system of control and regulation of foodstuffs and essential commodities, and cause wholesale starvation and want and even death.

“The next thing (after corruption and bribery) that strikes me is the evil of nepotism and jobbery. I want to make it quite clear that I shall never tolerate any kind of jobbery, nepotism or any influence directly or indirectly brought to bear upon me. Whenever I will find that such a practice is in vogue or is continuing anywhere, low or high, I shall certainly not countenance it.”

But Father of the Nation’s words stand forgotten today. The instability of the political situation in Pakistan cannot be underestimated as a factor in permitting corruption in the government and private sectors to flourish.

Hard Facts
The scandals and corrupt practices in power, sugar, flour and cement industries by the powerful government and opposition politicians is a pathetic picture of gloom. Hardly a day passes when the stories of corruption are not splashed on the print media and the electronic media. The government remains unmoved at the allegations and has failed to take up the issue of corruption in the National Assembly.  The situation has resulted in increasing poverty, making the lives of the people miserable.  Sugar price has failed to come down, flour is being sold at a price beyond the reach of common man and inflated electricity bills are a common routine. The strong cartels consisting of the government and opposition legislators happen to own majority of the sugar, flour and cement mills. The mill owners are hoarding their products to keep the prices sky-rocketing and to keep the black market flourishing.

Recently, opposition leader Faisal Saleh Hayat accused Minister for Water and Power Raja Pervez Ashraf of taking commission in millions in the award of rental power contracts. The facts transpired on a furious TV debate. The minister, however, after a few days’ sleepless nights woke up to sent a legal notice to Saleh Hayat for levelling what he called false and malicious allegations of taking commission in the award of rental power contracts. The minister also sought either an unconditional apology from the PML-Q leader or Rs1 billion in damages. The notice also clarified that the tariff of Independent Power Limited was 15.99 cent per unit, and not 18.17 cents per unit, as was claimed by the PML-Q leader. The notice said that Mr Hayat had made another false statement that the minister had purchased an expensive flat in London even before rental power plants began operation

Even the armed forces or the Defence Ministry shows lack of tranquility in their spending. This was revealed by “Dawn” that says, “The findings of the auditor-general that Rs18.4bn have not been correctly accounted for in the defence ministry’s budget of 2006-07 should not really shock anyone.  In 2005-06 the irregularities had amounted to Rs26bn — a huge leap from Rs1.1bn in 2004-05. But before we start celebrating the decrease this year it should be noted that the irregularities form 18 per cent of the audited spending, which means that the entire budget was not placed before the auditor. The internal auditing done on a test-check basis covered only 12 per cent of the accounts.

“Although more information may now be revealed in the budget there are still many grey areas with several details not being disclosed, as indicated in the auditor general’s report. Secrecy has very often been justified in the name of national security but is used as a cover-up for the ministry’s wrongdoings as all accounts are not allowed to come to light. In the age of information, it is no longer possible to hush up such irregularities that only tarnish the image of the men in uniform.”



US to make sure every dollar is spent transparently
US President’s Obama's Special Envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke vowed that the US before granting aid to Pakistan will make it sure that each and every dollar is spent transparently on uplift of the people of Pakistan. He said the US government is committed to assist Pakistan in this difficult juncture and will provide all kind of help to bring it out of persisting energy crisis. He said that as now the Kerry-Lugar Bill has been passed in the Senate, Pakistan will get $1.5 billion non-military aid annually.

The question arises where are the billions pledge that Islamabad was expecting from the FoDP. How can one expect from any donor to come forward to assist Pakistan from its current financial crisis without strict guarantees, when there hardly exists any law against the acts of corruption by the policy makers, though the poor are caught even on a small bank loan default. The situation is shameful.

FoDP takes shelter behind WB
The FoDP, a forum which was created by President Zardari to raise billions of dollars for the ailing economy, dumped the issue back into the lap of the World Bank, something which the president had specifically warned against when he launched it a year ago. Zardari’s government’s credibility is already seriously questioned internationally because of his own as well as many of his government’s key players past plagued by serious corruption charges.

The Summit leaders including US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown welcomed the announcement by the World Bank and the government of Pakistan to establish a Multi-Donor Trust Fund to provide for a coordinated financing mechanism for donor support of areas affected by terrorism, militancy, and extremism, but made no pledges of hard cash directly to Islamabad.

Watch Dogs
The international watch dogs have painted a poor picture of the prevailing corruption in Pakistan. Corruption in Pakistan has been viewed by many global monitoring agencies with grave concern. Their findings are based on hard facts. Despite the government’s claim to be committed to fighting corruption, little headway has been made, and it is still considered to be pervasive and deeply entrenched. The reports released by the monitoring agencies at a time when President Asif Zardari was out in America seeking billions from Friends of Democratic Pakistan proved harmful to the cause of Pakistan, but nobody can deny their credibility.

Pakistan among most corrupt nations:  TI
The lack of anti-graft laws makes Pakistan one of the most corrupt nations in the world and is coming in the way of foreign investments in the country, global anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International  says in a report published on September 24, 09.

Quoting from a joint World Bank-Planning Commission of Pakistan study on the country’s infrastructure implementation capacity, the TI report says 15 percent of corruption occurs at the procurement stage, costing the exchequer over Rs150 billion. This apart, the World Bank’s Control of Corruption Indicator in 2007 ranked Pakistan a lowly 21.3 out of 100. Then, the Global Competitiveness Report 2008-2009 ranked Pakistan 101 out of 130 countries and found that respondents pointed to corruption as the second most problematic factor for doing business in the country, after government instability.

Corruption Perception Index
The Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International is given weight by all global agencies like the World Bank, Heritage Foundation and the World Economic Forum. The transparency score of the country improved from one out of full score of 10 in 1996 to 2.53 in 1997. The score improved further to 2.7 in 1998, which proved the highest level in the following decade. During the much-trumpeted period of better governance under Musharraf, the highest transparency score achieved by the country was 2.6 in 2002.  Thereafter, the score declined to 2.1 in 2004 and 2005. It, however, improved to 2.5 in 2008. Governance experts point out that even at transparency score of 2.7, Pakistan remained a highly corrupt country as non-transparency or corruption was 73 per cent. At current transparency score of 2.5, corruption stands at 75 per cent.

According to the economists, “Corruption tactics mean that on every Rs 100 we spend on development, almost Rs 75 is lost in corruption. If corruption is curbed we will need one-fourth of our development budget for the current annual development programme.

Corruption jumps 400 pc in 3 years: NCPR
Corruption in Pakistan has surged by whopping 400 percent in the last three years, said National Corruption Perception Survey 2009 on June 17, 09. The NCPS conducted by the Pakistan chapter of Transparency International, indicates that overall corruption increased from Rs 45 billion in 2002 to Rs195 billion in 2009.

2002 Surveys are detailed below

In the The main feature of the Pakistan National Corruption Perception Survey (NCPS)2009 and ranking in 2006 and opinion of the 5,200 respondents the ranking of 10 government departments are: (1 Rank 1 being the most corrupt and 10 being the least corrupt) 

2009 Ranking	2006 Ranking	2002 Ranking
1. POLICE	1. POLICE	1. POLICE
2. POWER	2. POWER	2. POWER
3. HEALTH	3. JUDICIARY	3. TAXATION
4. LAND	4. LAND	4. JUDICIARY
5. EDUCATION	5. TAXATION	5. CUSTOM
6. TAXATION	6. CUSTOM	6. HEALTH
7. JUDICIARY	7. HEALTH	7. LAND
8. LOCAL GOVT	8. EDUCATION	8. EDUCATION
9. CUSTOM	9. RAILWAY	9. RAILWAY
10. TENDERING	10. BANK	10. BANK

Pakistan: National Corruption Perception Survey 2009 shows police and ‘power’ to be most corrupt institutions

India, China score better

The transparency score of India and Pakistan was at almost the same level in 2002. However, India improved governance by 30 per cent to attain a score of 3.4 in 2008 while China which was at Pakistan’s level in 1997 improved its score to 3.6. That, explained the great leap the economies of these two countries had taken compared with the decline in Pakistan. Corruption during the last 12 months had increased substantially which is reflected in the Corruption Perception Index of TI for 2009.

Political dichotomy

The political dichotomy between the parties has come to the fore. It is a messed up situation at the cost of the suffering millions. The faces of the corrupt are finally being unmasked. Corruption has brought a bad name to our dear country Pakistan and those who are suffering are the poor people. Millions are rotting in poverty in the society of masked rulers. It’s difficult to keep track of, much less name, the men and women who have been caught or let off while indulging in large-scale graft in Pakistan. But the number is bewildering.