Does corruption matter?

This paper recently carried a story, raising the important question whether or not the Panamagate scandal involving the Prime Minister and his children can affect the PML-N's political fortunes in the next year's general elections. Some analysts and ruling party sympathisers have been arguing that corruption does not matter in this country, and that what matters to the people is the ruling party's performance.
The proposition could be valid if the performance meets the needs of the people, ie, food, shelter, healthcare, education, and gainful employment. But the rulers seem to fancy what they need are roads, and transportation projects in some urban centres-that too for a small section of the selected cities' population.
Those who claim corruption is peripheral to public concerns need to go no farther than this country's recent electoral history. The PPP, for long a major political player countywide since its founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's policies gave ordinary people a sense of dignity and awareness about their rights, stands reduced to the status of a provincial party due to this very issue. It faced rout in the last general elections, as the BR story reminds us, because its leadership was implicated in various corruption scandals, including Swiss bank accounts, rental power scam, Hajj corruption case, and cash for appointments to choice positions. It can be contended that what caused that electoral debacle was not only the corruption issue but also bad governance. Yet there is the example of the 1997 elections, when the PPP was led by Benazir Bhutto, two-time prime minister and a popular politician. Still, the party had suffered a similar fate. A cloud of corruption allegations - remember the Surry Palace scandal and her spouse's Mr Ten Percent title? - proved to be the PPP's undoing. It managed to win only 18 National Assembly seats against it main rival PML-N's 137 seats.
Although at the time there were some who believed the 'invisible hand' had delivered that election to the Nawaz League, the fact is that the voter turnout in '97 was a mere 35.42 percent - the lowest ever in this country's electoral history. Those who witnessed the Election Day activities recall that an overwhelming number of committed PPP voters did not come out to vote for the party because of a strong corruption perception about the leadership - even though there was no formal conviction. Those were the days of ideological politics. The supporters and sympathisers of the PPP - then seen as a liberal, progressive party - could not bring themselves to vote for the right wing PML-N, and hence preferred to stay home, expressing their disappointment.
But then in the 2008 the PPP won again, though with the largest number of seats rather than a clear majority, under Asif Ali Zardari - who had inherited the mantle of PPP leadership from his wife - even though he is generally blamed for the '97 disaster. How did that come to pass? Since the elections took place soon after Benazir's assassination, sympathy vote could be a plausible explanation though only to a limited extent. Here is a better explanation. It needs to be recalled that the then military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, had made a deal with the PPP - brokered by Britain and the US to safeguard their interests in the region - leading to the so-called National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) under which the party was to lend support to the Musharraf regime in exchange for scrapping of various cases against its leadership as well as the general's other ally, the MQM. As per the agreement, he was allowed, unchallenged, to go through the motion of getting reelected by the then King's Party, the PML-Q, and some other friends, as president. But the deal brokers had wanted continued support for their favourite dictator through a power-sharing arrangement with the PPP. Hence the party needed to win the election, which it did. It is worth noting in the context that in the 2002 elections the PML-Q, as the King's Party, had bagged 126 NA seats and PPP (P) 81, but it took a drubbing in 2008 getting just 50 seats against the PPP's 118. Since it is an open secret that Musharraf needed to change horses, he could have resorted to a little political engineering to suit his purposes. In any event, those were extraordinary times, triggering extraordinary sentiments.
The 1997 and 2013 elections have amply demonstrated that corruption in high places has been a serious moral/political issue for the traditional PPP voters. In Punjab, the largest population province, and once a PPP stronghold, the party couldn't even find enough candidates to cover most constituencies in the last elections. In '97, many of the PPP's usual supporters did not use their right to vote for want of a better option. But in 2013, those who voted for the PTI included a large number of ex PPP followers. The space vacated by PPP has been occupied by the PTI because of its leader's clean financial reputation and his tireless campaign against corruption.
It is now the turn of the PML-N supporters to show what they think of the alleged mega corruption allegations involving the First Family. Irrespective of what the court decides, there exists a strong perception - like in the case of the PPP leadership - that the allegations are not without a basis. So far, the case does not seem to bother the PML-N's right leaning and mostly religious support base. The upcoming elections, however, would be a test for the Nawaz Leaguers. It would be interesting to see where their moral compass takes them. [email protected]