Editoral-A culture of mistrust

By Aslam Pervaiz Abro
Saturday, 26 Jun, 2010

A RECENT survey conducted by Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) is a grim reminder of the fact that corruption continues to be viewed as one the gravest problems facing the country.

The report, the National Corruption Perception Survey 2010 (NCPS), was comprised of a 24-page questionnaire filled out by 5,200 respondents from all four provinces.

It states that corruption has escalated to the extent that the amount involved in overall misappropriation has reached Rs223bn in 2010 as compared to Rs195bn in 2009. It ranks police and power as the two sectors perceived as the most corrupt and pins land administration and the education department at number three and four respectively.

TIP’s findings are not unfounded and appear to reflect the realities that keep the country mired in backwardness. Syed Adil Gilani, the chairman of TIP, correctly indicated that corruption “is the root cause of poverty, illiteracy, terrorism, shortage of electricity, food etc and lack of governance in Pakistan”.

The survey highlights that 70 per cent of the respondents think that the current government is more corrupt than the previous one. It is axiomatic that people have become disillusioned and frustrated, believing that their expectations have been left unfulfilled by the government they elected to end a long period of dictatorship. Going by the respondents’ views, then, the citizens seem to have lost trust in the current set-up and appear confused when it comes to drawing a distinction between dictatorship and democracy.

The four sectors that the NCPS 2010 ranked as being perceived as the most corrupt are public service departments where any kind of malpractice has a direct bearing on the life of ordinary citizens. Amongst the major reasons that government departments, including the four seen as the worst affected, are riddled with corruption are excessive political influence and the government’s cavalier attitude towards corrective action.

In the police department, political meddling remains the order of the day. Money comes easily to the policeman who abuses his power for the purpose of extortion. With political backing, the corrupt policeman gets away with malpractice even if a departmental inquiry is instituted. While there is talk about reforms in several sectors, the legislators remain silent on the need to reform the police.

The Police Order 2002, which provides for checks and balances on police power, is being done away with by the present government which considers it non-workable. Yet no substitute legislation laying emphasis on accountability is in evidence.

The report indicts the power sector perceived as being callously corrupt. This is hardly surprising since blackouts have added immensely to people’s miseries. The stealing of electricity through kundas or illegal hook-ups is a common practice that can be seen in the streets of almost every town in the country. Yet Wapda employees look the other way or even collude in the malpractice: the limitless consumption of ‘free’ electricity is just a matter of paying a few hundred rupees to the lineman.

Thus, electricity shortage was bound to happen. The short-term measures adopted by the government, including the reduction in the number of working days, the closure of businesses at 8pm and the stress on independent power producers — whose process of tender is questionable in terms of transparency — cannot bear fruit until corruption is eradicated.

According to the NCPS 2010, land administration is the third most corrupt sector in Pakistan. The land mafia, in palpable connivance with government officials and politicians, can in many areas be found to be illegally occupying government land and public areas designated for parks, playgrounds, etc.

Take the example of Sindh Goth Abad (Housing Scheme) Act 1987 which provides for the allocation of land, free of charge, to poor people. Under this scheme, the land mafia has grabbed thousands of acres in Karachi and has been selling it to people against the payment of hundreds of thousand rupees. Some observers believe that the current spate of targeted killing in Karachi is related to land grabbing.

Land records, which are currently manually maintained, must be computerised to insulate them from patwaris’ and tehsildars’ manipulations: in many cases, such officials favour those who offer bribes.

Such widespread corruption is a result of the absence of a viable accountability system that enforces anti-corruption laws. The general public cannot help but lose trust in state institutions whose organisational heads, even at the town and district level, acquire postings through bribes.

This is a situation that leads to a culture of mistrust and dashes the citizenry’s hope for justice. This was recently seen when the Supreme Court ordered the set-up of a National Accountability Bureau investigation team headed by Tariq Khosa, ex-director general of the Federal Investigation Agency, to investigate the Bank of Punjab scam.

Invoking Section 27 of the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999, the chairman NAB wrote to the Establishment Division to requisition the services of Mr Khosa. The government turned down the request and appointed Aftab Sultan, additional inspector general of police in Punjab, as head of the NAB investigation team.

Whether it is Mr Sultan or Mr Khosa, the Supreme Court’s directive that a third person from a different department be appointed to head the NAB investigation team constitutes a question mark regarding the bureau’s efficiency and credibility in investigating a high-profile corruption case.

The Supreme Court seems to have given this order in view of the NAB officials’ inability to grill many big guns involved in the scam. The matter has to be viewed in context of the fact that NAB has so far shied away from examining the federal law minister — the bureau’s boss: the accused in the case, Sheikh Muhammad Afzal, has alleged that the minister received Rs35m for getting a court verdict in favour of the accused.

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