The Genesis of Corruption
Publisher and Managing Editor IKRAM SEHGAL wrote an article entitled "THE GENESIS OF CORRUPTION" for THE NATION which we are re-producing with thanks.
Introduction
Corruption
was alive and well when Pakistan was created in 1947 but it has been very
much in fashion in South Asia (and the rest of the world) for centuries.
However, many areas of our society had remained relatively safe
from its ugly tentacles. Unfortunately the many opportunities created by
the inception of the new State and the early loss of credible leaders like
the Quaid and Liaquat Ali Khan Shaheed allowed
corruption to gradually permeate through and subvert the whole
spectrum of society. By 1958
the civilian government had become a full partner to those engaged
in corruption. The first
martial law tried to stamp out this corruption,
the style may be different
in this military regime, the substance of primary raison d’etre for
clamping authoritarian rule in place of a democracy remains
the same. The first
martial law did not have as difficult
a time as the present military rulers are having four decades later,
corruption is now deeply imbedded in the psyche of the entire country,
almost without exception. Forty
years ago people using foul means gave bribes to overcome their
competition, today almost everyone, even those using fair means, must give
bribes to get things done.
The
fruits of corruption can now be spirited away abroad much more easily than
in the olden days when it was invested in property or kept buried
in dark places, that has acted as a "force-mulitplier" for the
proliferation of corruption. Uptil 1857, the British bribed their way into
power across South Asia by seducing recalcitrants among the close
relatives/associates of various rulers.
After 1857, they created a new "loyal" elite by
distributing vast tracts of land that became theirs by default of having
defeated the vestiges of the old Mughal Empire.
This newly–landed gentry owed their loyalty to the British Raj,
who in turn promoted their new protégés into aping their customs and
traditions. As the tracts of
land became smaller and the urban population became larger, smaller units
of land i.e. residential and commercial plots, were used by the rulers as
weapons of bribe for their own continued rule.
The political governments perfected this "art".
In Pakistan the first great exercise of this was in Karachi when
the Pakistan Employees Cooperative Housing Society (PECHS) came into
being, residential plots were allotted to bureaucrats and then re-sold on
the commercial market at astronomical prices, giving windfall instant
riches to the "lucky" bureaucrats. Commercial areas such as I.
I. Chundrigar Road, etc had already been carved up among the relatives and
friends of those who succeeded Liaquat Ali Khan Shaheed.
Earlier they were responsible for the "permit" windfall,
sanctions for various "commodities", "industries", etc
that were given to favourites and sold for a premium.
A Gulberg appeared in Lahore and a Satellite Town in Rawalpindi,
fore-runners to a whole host of such residential societies, formed mainly
on black money. Real estate became a haven for illegal wealth.
When the more organized Pakistan Defence Officers Cooperative
Housing Society (now Defence Housing Authority (DHA) Karachi came into
being, money started flowing in from the very rich for purchase of land at
comparatively cheaper prices from the military beneficiaries of allotted
residential and commercial plots. It was only later that the men in
uniform discovered that
they could sell the real estate at higher commercial prices to supplement
their meagre incomes, mainly to purchase cars and household
electrical/electronic goods. Major
corruption took hold in society across the broad spectrum of the body
politic involving politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, Armed Forces
personnel, etc. Kickbacks
started to proliferate in every procurement contract, every construction
contract, every service contract, etc.
Of the assessed taxes only 10-15% went to the government, if any,
at least 25-30% went to the tax collectors, balance was pocketed by the
unscrupulous. The situation now is that we recover only 30% of the taxes
that are liable. This has put an enormous economic burden on the State, we
are always depending upon loans from abroad to shore up our Budget.
We may have even reached a stage of country debt default.
With nationalization in 1973, corruption force-multiplied,
remaining manageable under political control till 1977. However, things
went berserk under absolute bureaucratic rule during the third martial law
1977-1985. By the time the
political government of sorts came back to power in 1985, corruption was
endemic across the board, during the Bhutto/Sharif/Bhutto/Sharif 1988-1999
political period, it crossed all bounds.
Bankers also got into the act, showing means and methods to
politicians how to become "instant"
businessmen by taking loans from the financial institutions without
collateral and without any intention of returning the loans.
The word "loan default" came into the Pakistan lexicon.
By the 80s a few people in the Armed Forces fell prey to their retired
colleagues’ machinations and were rumoured to have taken kickbacks in
defence procurement deals. These
contracts were large but the uniformed people involved were only a
handful. By the 90s, influence and contracts ran Pakistan through a
network of nepotism and corruption. When
Gen Pervez Musharraf took over, the situation was horrific. The National
Accountability Bureau (NAB) was a last-chance solution waiting to happen,
something that Pakistan desperately needed
to ward off threats to its very existence as a nation.
National
In
an article for THE NATION on Sept 16, 2000 entitled "NAB BLUES?"
I wrote, "When
Amjad became the Chairman of the newly commissioned NAB last October,
great things were expected from him.
In the Army he had acquired a reputation as a clean, honest (to a
fault) and professionally competent soldier (and he remains one).
He methodically set
about cleaning the dirty stables of the muck-filled Pakistani farm, and if
not rid us altogether of nepotism and corruption,
putting the fear of
God into a majority of the corrupt lot,
their illegal activities could no longer be carried out openly
without any questions or fear.
Not only the hopes of the COAS and the Pakistan Army but that of
the entire nation rested upon him. One forgave him his first
"bull-in-a-China shop" steps
because of inexperience and a nation hungry that the guilty be brought to
justice. In the process a
number of well-known businessmen were hauled up and subjected to extreme
discomfort, if not third degree treatment.
Obviously this was playing to the gallery and the people of
Pakistan were generally delighted at what they thought was just
retribution for those who had looted the country’s wealth for over five
decades", unquote.
Economy
and Accountability
The
Economy and Accountability can never be separated from each other because
of the opportunities the public sector in a burgeoning economy offers for
those engaged in corruption. In
‘THE INSEPARABLE TWINS" in THE NATION on Jan 22, 2000, to quote
"One cannot forsake public perception, for the sake of our present
rulers NAB has to come good quickly. Given that investigation and
prosecution of white-collar crime is not a piece of cake, NAB should have
first gone for those easily nabbed. All
politicians, who took part in the 1990, 1993 and 1997 elections, have had
to declare their assets", unquote.
The
present government went wholesale after loan defaulters. In their
enthusiasm to show some results, a part of the exercise became
counter-productive. This gave an excuse for vested interest among
defaulters (and those bankers who wilfully engineered that default) to
start a vicious adverse propaganda against NAB about the effect on
business in the country. Unfortunately
for them the rampaging stock market not only belied such apprehensions but
also exposed them as false doomsday prophets.
The
second object of collective public anger
NAB went after were those members of the bureaucracy who not only
enriched themselves at public expense but flouted their illegal wealth
with impunity. This exercise
was done in two phases; the first phase reconciled their income/wealth tax
returns with a declaration of assets presently held by them, the second
investigated whether they were living within their means. A law enacted by
the Quaid as far back as 1947 makes any bureaucrats found living beyond
their means guilty of misconduct, bureaucrats
were asked to prove the difference between their known income/wealth as
declared by them and their expenditures. Detailed scrutiny, thereafter,
has served to ascertain as to how the person had acquired wealth beyond
his known income. Necessarily such as an exercise begins from the top, a
gradual process of elimination filtering down to the lowest rung in the
ladder of public employment.
Curbing
Perjury
A
few months ago I sat and watched in increasing frustration and disgust as
two senior executives of Pakistan TV, a semi-government corporation, lied
through their teeth while giving evidence under oath.
Almost every sentence
of their affidavits was an absolute fabrication,
answers to every question was a blatant untruth. Even though this
was before one of the best judges ever produced by the judiciary in
Pakistan, one could see why the judiciary seems to have become helpless to
prevent perjury. The case
being subjudice, one cannot ethically take names, however one can
understand the reason why accountability is so difficult in a country
where almost all statements or cross-examinations under oath are badly
tainted. For personal gain, whether monetary or otherwise, false
representation of facts and distortions, a gentlemanly phrase for
"outright lies", is the order of the day. The Oxford Dictionary very correctly gives the meaning of
perjury as "an act of wilfully telling an untruth when on oath",
and goes on to use the words, "lying, mendacity, mendaciousness,
falsification, deception, untruthfulness, dishonesty, duplicity".
In simple terms, a perjurer is a criminal.
In most countries, perjury carries exemplary punishment, ruthless
enough for people to try and avoid giving a statement under oath lest that
statement (or part thereof) be detected to be false.
The system is so credible that depositions under oath save the time
of the courts in long-drawn out examination of witnesses.
Automatic and severe punishment acts as a deterrent of sorts, a
search of the legal history all over the developed world will show that
because of repeated convictions due to perjury, the drop in corruption has
been commensurate with that of perjury. This is something to concentrate
upon, NAB will remain strait-jacketed until
exemplary punishment is mandated for those who make false
accusations and/or falsify their statements.
Obviously such deliberate misinformation
is for personal gain or personal vendetta.
White-collar crime by itself is not easy to pursue, with public
servants and private citizens both confident that even if they perjure
themselves no one is going to take action against them, investigations are
unlikely to succeed. NAB should give the highest priority to perjury cases,
making it impossible to tell lies, whether
under oath or not.
In
‘’TRUE OR FALSE" on Sept 2, 2000 in THE NATION I discussed the
effect of perjury, quote, "To
put it bluntly, most of our problems can be traced to the willingness of
those under oath to tell lies with impunity, to forge documents, to erase,
alter, deface, mutilate, etc evidence as may be required. And unless we do
something about this it will be downhill all the way for us as a nation
and it may well cost our children their future. Things are in such a state
that a frustrated common citizen very rarely consents to bear any witness,
for fear of being persecuted by the forces of evil. And what about lawyers
who are sworn to uphold the law? It should be made incumbent upon the
lawyers to carefully satisfy themselves about the cases of their clients
and not present false evidence or misleading arguments on their behalf. In
fact NAB must also satisfy itself that unwittingly it has not engaged such
lawyers on contract, scoundrels can manage to camouflage themselves behind
the cover of the name of good English sounding legal firms. Are lawyers
not duty bound to only represent before the court what is truthful?
It should also be included in the statute
books that lawyers who do not present the truth before the court
knowing it to be false and/or fabricate the truth to support the
client’s lies, should also be prosecuted for misrepresentation and
punished on the same basis as aforementioned except that they should also
pay the supreme penalty of not being able to practice any more.
NAB would do well to do an internal enquiry to rid itself of such
shysters.
Perception
against the truth
NAB
suffered at the hands of the media because the media basically lacked
knowledge about the scope of NAB's mission and not being exposed to media
reality NAB never tried to educate the media or enhance their own media
image despite their excellent accomplishments recorded in the short span
of one year. A total 173 cases have been filed in Court, 81 in Punjab,
Sindh 47, NWFP 25 and Balochistan 20, of these 10 cases have been decided
in Punjab, 13 in Sindh, 14 in NWFP and 9 in Balochistan, a total of 46
cases while 127 cases are in various stages of judicial process. And who
are these people facing accountability? Among them there are 37
politicians from PML (N), 22 from PPP and 10 belonging to other parties
i.e. a total of 69 politicians. 39 bureaucrats (22 of Grade 20 and above)
who have been charged in court while only 17 businessmen are under NAB
investigation i.e. 10 of their cases have been placed before a court of
law. This gives lie to the perception that because businessmen are being
targeted, investors remained shy of the country. If the 173 cases, only 27
are of "bank default", 73 cases are because of "misuse of
authority" and 39 due to "embezzlement". There are 460
cases under investigation, of which 152 (i.e. 33%) have been completed and
308 are under progress. Again in the investigations 211 are politicians,
the next large number 170 is that of bureaucrats, businessmen constitute
only 32 cases i.e. a bare 7%. Yet why is it that the everyone seems to be
up in arms against accountability? This is because of a vested interest
among those most affected, politicians (46%) and bureaucrats (38%), that
83% keeps a drumbeat of false rumours and accusations going against NAB.
Unfortunately for them, truth will always ultimately prevail. Against the
real achievements of NAB such fiction cannot stand.
NAB
and the
As
stated earlier, corruption had reached endemic proportions by Oct 1999 and
despite some effort from time to time there was no real attempt to control
this disease. Mian Nawaz Sharif's government initially seemed to be
committed to this by the establishing of the Ehtesab Bureau but by putting
a politician-in-charge, Senator Saifur Rehman, someone who was so partisan
that he publicly vowed to go after only the leaders of the opposition
parties or those who were considered "enemies" of Mian Nawaz
Sharif, the credibility of the entire exercise was undermined. Gen Pervez
Musharraf and his colleagues were faced with the imminent collapse of the
economy if things were not brought under control, the first priority,
therefore, was to effect genuine accountability in this country for the
first time. From a standing start and within a short time of 365 days what
has achieved is nothing short of a miracle — and all this while
handicapped with respect to experienced personnel. Only an institution
founded in integrity like NAB was steeped in could fight corruption as
institutionalized in Pakistan. A superhuman effort was required and in the
course of a "learning curve", focus was finally adjusted to the
correct objectives. Very incorrectly NAB was perceived to be
anti-business, in fact the studies show that not only have business people
been targeted very little, by targeting a combined 83% of politicians and
bureaucrats, NAB has got its focus right. Unfortunately this is not the
public perception and must be corrected. Above all, valuable experience
and knowledge has been gained. Instead of acting like a lynch mob and
delivering French justice "guilty until proven innocent",
NAB has conducted the judicial process in a reasonable, if
expeditious manner. Something extremely important has gone completely
unnoticed by the public and the media, the strict adherence to the rule of
law when it was easy for NAB to use martial law percepts. That by itself
has been a tremendous achievement for NAB's credibility, both locally and
internationally.
One
has no doubt that for Pakistan the Rs 26 billion or so NAB has recovered
(approximately 5% of the annual Federal Budget) will go upto Rs 100
billion in the next year (or 20% approximately of the Federal Budget).
That does not count the fact that almost double that amount must have been
saved because of the fear of NAB's accountability, NAB thus has a dominant
role in the economy as a deterrent against endemic corruption that
subverts progress and development. Unfortunately because of this
responsibility, to keep its credibility NAB must keep its personnel and
their functioning under constant internal review. The new Chairman NAB Lt
Gen Khalid Maqbool, seems to have a different, more genial style from his
more intense predecessor Lt Gen Muhammad Amjad but the substance and the
intensity of the campaign against corruption remains the same. In fact it
will be further enhanced. Make no mistake, the National Accountability
Bureau (NAB), despite all the hiccups associated with its birth and the
first few hesitant steps, has developed into a crime-fighting institution
that the people of Pakistan have been waiting for with growing desperation
for over 50 years. NAB has now to ensure that its image remains clean and
its credibility is enhanced by focussing on corruption without fear or
favour, it is vital for Pakistan that NAB keeps its Pakistan's
"crime-fighter extraordinary" status. NAB is this military
government's most potent success story. The bottom line is that within one
year NAB has proved its worth in stemming, if not eradicating, corruption
in Pakistan.
