Daily Times

If Pakistan had not been passing through abnormal times, the discourse on corruption would have been confined to the realm of governance. The army chief did have not to openly offer his help to end the phenomenon, which he rightly insists is linked with the ongoing spate of terrorism across the country. Pakistan is rife with corruption, and the ‘daring’ souls ensconced in responsible positions in various ministries and departments stash away approximately 15 billion dollars from the national exchequer every year. Corruption not only deprives teeming millions of the chance to get out of the vicious cycle of poverty and ignorance by availing facilities like education and healthcare but it also deters foreign investors to develop stakes in Pakistan. Corruption is transgression of one’s authority. It is a connotation of being negligent, undutiful and irresponsible. It simply amounts to flouting the rule of law and challenging the writ of the state. The high scale of corruption not only signifies non-professionalism of government officials and absence of a process of accountability process it also brings into focus the gaping holes in the justice system of the country. The National Accountability Bureau, Pakistan’s prime anti-corruption agency, has been accorded with absolute powers but yet it performs poorly vis-a-vis recovery of looted assets and initiating cases against corrupt politicians, retired generals, bureaucrats and businessmen.

One factor of high and rising level of corruption in Pakistan is that it is more structural than functional. It is a morality crisis that has afflicted the people of a society with strong pluralistic traditions. Of course, it is immoral to be corrupt and socially alienated. The problem, in a way, rests with the tradition of the country to assign religious organisations — which are generally meant to engage themselves in guiding the people on moral path through education and volunteerism — a wide space in politics. The politicised religious groups have not only proved instrumental in stalling the land reforms — and thus preserving the feudal structure of society — but also stood in the way of infusing sense of territorial nationalism among the people by insisting on ‘ideological’ identity of the state.

The landed aristocracy, which has also developed stakes in industry with the passage of time, has traditionally considered religious organisations as an important political ally to deny fundamental rights to monitories, women and children. The political clout of religious organisations has facilitated the way of their indoctrinated cronies into civil and strategic institutions during the Cold War era, corroding the nation’s will to act decisively when jihadis returned home only to engage themselves in sectarian killings. Besides religious organisations, ethno-nationalist groups are the other tools in the hands of the conservative section of society to promote their politics of divide-and-rule.

The so-called consensus constitution accommodates the concerns of both politico-religious and ethno-nationalists groups by simultaneously declaring Pakistan a religious state, and confining the administrative division of the country into four ‘ethnic’ provinces, flouting the concept of citizenship advocated by the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, in his 11th of August 1947 address to the first Constituent Assembly.

Race and religion being the foundation of ‘citizenship’ becomes the root cause of corruption in Pakistan. There is no merit in getting justice — both administrative and judicial — jobs and development funds. In the absence of state nationalism, people stuck to their primitive identities daringly loot the national exchequer without any sense of shame or fear of retribution.

Those who are meant to remove the stigma of corruption are themselves guilty of plundering national assets. It is not that there is an absence of required laws to end this saga of shame that has direct bearing on the integrity of the state, but the unfortunate reality is that there is no concerted will to implement them in letter and spirit. It is time to change the direction of the state. The country has gone too far to defend its ideological frontiers and, consequently, had its geography cracked due to such a heavy burden. Across the board, and fair and through accountability is the way out, but the same passes through the ‘consensus’ constitution, which needs to be overhauled as per the vision of the Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

The writer is Director at the Center for Policy and Media Studies