The Transparency International, defines corruption as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. Corruption is a vice that erodes trust, weakens democracy, hampers economic development and further exacerbates inequality, poverty, social division and the environmental crisis. Corruption can take many forms, and can include behaviours like: public servants demanding or taking money or favours in exchange for services, politicians misusing public money or granting public jobs or contracts to, their sponsors, friends and families, corporations bribing officials to get lucrative deals.
Corruption can happen anywhere, in the government institutions/departments, in the government planned development projects, and in the private sector involving government funds or private money. Corruption can involve anyone: politicians, government officials, public servants, officials/members of the state institutions, business people or members of the public. Corruption happens, often with the help of professional enablers such as bankers, lawyers, accountants and real estate agents, opaque financial systems and anonymous companies that allow corruption schemes to flourish and the corrupt are allowed to launder and hide their illicit wealth.
Like many other countries of the world, more so like neighbour India, corrupt practices also prevail in Pakistan, which has impacted its economy negatively. This article mainly deals with the public sector corruption in Pakistan, where public money is plundered by the elected representatives of the party in power, bureaucracy and bank officials together. Out of the public money allotted for development projects, very less is spent on the projects/provision of services to the people and the major part of it goes into the pockets, out of which private properties/assets are made to make it white or this money is laundered to hide corruption. And with very little money spent on the projects, the quality and life of the projects is compromised due to the inefficiency or corruption prevailing in the quality control departments. Since proper documentation of the projects’ spending is done to meet the audit requirement, the alleged corrupt persons cannot be punished.
The main weakness lies in judicial ruling, where the prosecution is asked to prove whether assets of the defendant are in accordance with his income — rather than placing the burden of proof on the defendant himself
Likewise, the public representatives and influential civil servants get heavy loans from the banks, out of the government money and peoples’ money deposited in the banks, and later get those loans written off by their party’s government by getting political favour through pressure tactics. This also causes heavy loss to the government and the private money. The article also deals with the corruption done by hiding of /wrong declaration of assets by the public representatives, government officials and the general public, and corruption in the FBR that results in an insufficient collection of taxes/revenues for annual budgets, which cause budget deficits that compel the governments to get domestic and foreign loans.
The above discussed corruption has been a major cause for Pakistan’s hampered economic growth and development and has caused a wider economic and social inequality in the society. Corruption has also placed Pakistan under heavy foreign debt, and has kept the common people without necessary public services. Because of having heavy foreign debt, and being not able to return the debt instalments, due to depleted production/economic growth, exports and forex reserves, Pakistan’s sovereignty has also been badly dented as it is compelled to take further loans from the friendly countries and the IMF/World Bank, which are controlled by the major western powers like the US, and EU countries.
Therefore, now, the time has come that Pakistan’s national leaders belonging to all the political parties realise the need to end corruption in the country by relegating their personal/party gains to the country’s interest. In this regard, they should know Quaid-I-Azam’s advice about ending the corruption, where he had said, “Corruption and bribery are like poison and a horrible disease, which need to be put down with an iron hand.”
Hence, ending the corruption is necessary, in order to make Pakistan an economically self reliant and strong country based on the CPEC supported economic development. This needs to be done to serve Pakistan’s people well by ending poverty and bringing prosperity, to maintain strong armed forces to meet the ever growing security challenges in the region and to enable Pakistan to rise as a self reliant and sovereign economic and military power to play its due role for the regional peace and prosperity.
To end the corruption, although the anti corruption departments existed in Pakistan for the last many years and later the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was also added, but these institutions could not perform well to reign in the corrupt people. The main reason was the least emphasis by the successive governments to end the corruption, because of the involvement of the influential public representatives, and government officials in this malpractice, and the people facing corruption charges easily escaped the punishments due to weaker prosecution laws and the judicial system. However, it is encouraging that Imran led PTI government has started a clear drive against corruption, but this government is facing many hurdles in their this undertaking.
The major hurdles are; the opposition politicians who are facing corruption charges belong to a rich class and control most of the businesses in the country and therefore they are countering government’s anti corruption drive by controlling the market and raising the prices of the commodities of daily use by hoarding these to discredit the government in the eyes of the people/voters with a view to getting the PTI government voted out in the next general elections.
Moreover, because of our weak prosecution and judicial systems, many corruption cases are lingering without any result. The main weakness is the judicial ruling, where the prosecution is asked to prove, whether assets of an accused person are in accordance with his income sources, rather than asking the concerned individual to prove that, as he is supposed to know his sources of income much better than the prosecution. Also, as the judicial system needs witnesses to prove the corruption charges, the witnesses brought before the accountability courts by the NAB ultimately change their statements in favour of the accused as they are heavily bribed by the accused out of the plundered money.
The above discussion indicates, that whereas it is a necessity to end corruption in Pakistan, it can only be done if all political parties vow to work against it, as the political parties in power keep changing based on their victory in the general elections held after every five years. However, currently, the political parties in the opposition should start cooperating with the PTI government in its anti corruption drive, especially, in supporting the government for amending the anti corruption laws in the national assembly and senate, to make those more potent to end the corruption.
In this context, the judiciary, election commission, NAB and other departments should also vow to support the anti corruption drive of this government, as well as the future governments, which struggle for ending corruption in the country. The Supreme Court of Pakistan can help by giving a ruling that, the accused person will have to prove that his assets are in accordance with his sources of income, rather than the prosecution doing that, although prosecution will do its bit by providing the information available with it.
And, above all, the people of Pakistan should also support any political party/government, which struggles to end corruption in Pakistan. At the same time, to get support of the people for ending corruption in Pakistan, whereas the current PTI government should ease peoples’ economic hardship by arresting the ever growing rise in the prices of the daily use commodities, it should also compensate the salaried class and the pensioners by increasing their salaries up to minimum 25 percent, in the coming budget, as has been very rightly announced by the Punjab government for its employees and the pensioners.
Also, whereas the government should further improve its anti corruption strategy to make the process more transparent to avoid the blame that individuals of other political parties are being victimized, the NAB should also make its prosecution procedures strong and it should make its work more transparent to avoid the blame that the NAB was victimising the accused persons. At the same time the accountability courts and appellate courts should ensure that all the corruption cases are dealt with due urgency to get quick results and that the accused persons are not allowed to unnecessarily delay the cases by not attending the court proceedings by presenting lame excuses.
The writer is a former Research Fellow of IPRI and Senior Research Fellow of SVI Islamabad
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