Re: TI report-Corruption has increased since 99 coup
Trying to spin and fool your way out of this does not help.
A report by the highly regarded Irfan Hussain of Dawn, somebody who is a lot less biased and far more credible than your fineself.
Corruption on the rise
THE Musharraf government’s proudest boast is that it has greatly reduced corruption in Pakistan. But this claim has been rudely shattered by the latest Transparency International (TI) report that shows that Pakistan, far from being cleaner today, is more corrupt than it was when the army took over in 1999.
According to a report published a week ago, we are now 142nd out of 163 countries ranked by the international watchdog body. Seven years ago, when Musharraf seized power, Pakistan was ranked 87th. So, after years of being lectured by government spokesmen about how the army was cleansing the country, and hundreds of millions being spent on the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), we find that crooks are flourishing more than ever before.
One of the principal charges against Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto was that of corruption each time they were removed through army-backed coups. This happened with such monotonous regularity in the ‘90s that as soon as a party was elected, people asking when — and not if — the government would be sacked. And of course, there was much substance to the allegations of sleaze. But surely, if they could be removed for corruption, should we not be asking why the present lot should not be made equally accountable?
When elected politicians were in office between 1989 and 1999, you could not pick up a newspaper without allegations of some scam or another. Now, such stories are few and far between despite Pakistan having made a spectacular rise up the TI annual corruption barometer. As a result, columnists, leader writers and the chattering classes generally are not constantly writing and talking about corruption. So despite the evidence, the perception — assiduously cultivated by NAB and the information ministry — is that the system is somehow more transparent and less corrupt. But this gloss does not fool anybody who has to deal with ministers and civil servants. Businessmen say they are now encountering higher demands for bribes than ever before. People with the simplest requests who visit government offices are expected to pay substantial sums as a routine cost.
So why is the media not investigating these allegations with the same zeal it displayed in the ‘90s? And this is despite the fact that there are many more private TV and radio channels today than there were seven years ago. In the pre-Musharraf days, the press was in a constant feeding frenzy, and its investigative stories were often picked up by the foreign media, reinforcing the impression that our politicians were more corrupt than their counterparts in other parts of the world. Thus, the army coup of 1999 was generally welcomed. Even well-informed journalists climbed on the bandwagon.
It is a well-known fact that intelligence agencies keep a number of journalists on their payrolls, and feed them stories maligning politicians they consider opposing the GHQ’s line. A steady stream of such innuendos and allegations can damage any reputation. The other string in the establishment’s bow is the harassment independent journalists have been subjected to. Some have been picked up, thrashed and dumped far from home. And since our courts are so emasculated, they provide little protection to individuals, or any oversight to check the abuses committed by officials and agencies. However, the Supreme Court’s stand in pressurising the government into releasing a few of the “disappeared” from a list of hundreds must be acknowledged.
The fact is that Pakistan has no monopoly on corruption, although it has been institutionalised to a remarkable degree here. In many advanced democracies, politicians have been accused of venality of one kind or another. Governments have been shaken by scandals. Public figures have resigned, or have been tried and occasionally jailed. When they have tried to hang tough, many have been defeated in elections. Through the media, the judiciary and the electoral process, they have been held accountable. Generals have not used allegations of corruption to stage coups. Had this been a tradition, Italy would have been ruled today by the army, given the many charges ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is facing. And US Vice-President Dick Cheney would be in hot water over his role in assigning billions of dollars worth of government contracts to Halliburton, his old company, without inviting competitive bids.
Clearly, corruption is a fact of life we have to put up with. As long as greed is part of the human condition, we cannot eliminate it entirely. The best we can hope for is a reduction in this disease. One problem we face in poor countries is that the demand for the most basic services far exceeds supply. So to obtain what should be his by right, a person has to pay a bribe to jump the long queue of other equally deserving applicants. And when an official is faced with such a situation, he will tend to take advantage of it. This, too, is human nature. The answer lies in removing bottlenecks and making the system transparent so civil servants are less able to misuse their discretionary powers.
But above all, economic development is the key to reducing corruption. The TI barometer shows that by and large, richer countries are less corrupt as a rule. As services become universally available, and unemployment falls, there are fewer incentives to offer bribes. And with education comes a strengthening of institutions that can act as a deterrent to corruption. Of course there are many exceptions: greed knows no bounds, and in the most advanced countries, examples of corporate venality abound. However, ordinary citizens can (and do) spend a lifetime without having to pay a bribe.
Equally clearly, politically motivated anti-corruption drives that target political opponents do more harm than good.** Despite its tall claims, NAB has not reduced corruption. Rather, it has slowed down decision-making in the bureaucracy, not that it was ever very swift. And by terrorising bureaucrats, it has pushed up the bribery rate. Above all, by removing the armed forces and the judiciary from its ambit, NAB has lost whatever credibility it might have had.**
What emerges from this discussion is that at the end of the day, there is no magic wand to remove corruption from society. And the army, given its own severe problems with corruption, is the last institution to set itself up as judge, jury and hangman.
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/mazdak.htm
kinda funny you dont mention it any more.
