For many bureaucrats, politicians and businesses, a cloud of fear hangs over Pakistan. The ongoing crackdown against corruption is being likened to a witch-hunt that can derail both the country’s economy and democracy. This begs some soul searching.
The perception that the current government is paying excessive attention to anti-corruption could be real. For example, in a recent interview with BR Research, Shahzad Saleem, Chairman of the renowned Nishat Chunian Group, complained that “accountability should be there but not like the way it is being done here.” It “is a big negative for overall investor sentiment. This is increasing the risk factor for doing business. People do wrong things across the world. What matters is the appropriate reaction by the state.”
Similar sentiments were shared by Shabbar Zaidi, Chairman A.F. Ferguson & Co, in his recent interview with BR Research. Zaidi worried that “the government has already wasted six months harping about corruption, and if they don’t reform the system, its structure, and then they too will be back to square one by the end of their tenure.”
There is a possibility that after a regime change, certain business interests, groups and magnates inevitably fall out of favour or be made to fall in line through anti-corruption drives. It has happened in Pakistan before and no surprises if it happens again. But background checks with both pro-and anti-PTI businesses, most of whom don’t prefer to be quoted, reveal that fears of witch hunt have grown over the last few months.
Background discussion with think-tank circles in Islamabad also reveals that many honest bureaucrats are afraid of taking decisions out of fear that if things go wrong, as some decisions do in normal course of affairs, they may be nabbed, suffer a media trial and gain bad reputation even if they are respectfully let go.
In absence of detailed content analyses of speeches, media talks, tweets of PTI leaders (think tanks, academia take note), it may be so the perception of witch-hunt like anti-corruption is in fact just a perception, and not a reality – just as Pakistani cricketer Ahmed Shehzad is widely perceived as a brisk scoring batsman when in fact hard cricket statistics show he is amongst the slowest in the world.
Then again, unlike a cricketer, a government can ill-afford to have clouds of such fears and perceptions hang over the country’s economic and social life. The maxim that not only justice must be done; it must also be seen and perceived to be done applies here. If witch-hunt like anti-graft is not really being done, then it is the state’s responsibility to take the society and its key stakeholders into confidence.
There is no denying that corruption has eaten Pakistan like wood-boring beetles since 1947; an anti-corruption law was one of the first items of legislation enacted by the assembly soon after independence.
But there is also no denying that a country is not a single-horse carriage. It’s at least a 6,8,10 horses wagon - the jury is still out there with the economist community debating what works and does not work.
Rest assured, whipping a single horse (of being corruption-free) will not elevate the country among the comity of nations. If it were so, then India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia and many others who are ranked rather close to Pakistan in corruption indices would also have been suffering from the kind of economic crises that Pakistan faces over and over again.
Some pro-PTI observers argue that because PM Khan came to power on the promises of campaign against corruption, he can ill-afford to go soft against corruption. That may be so. But isn’t it also true that good leaders know the difference between rallying cries and actionable agenda? They know which battles to choose; they also know when to take a general’s retreat; and of course, when to take a U-turn.
PM Khan and his advisors would do well to read up on global literature on corruption. Three relevant lessons from that literature are: (a) that governance and anti-corruption are not the same; (b) that you don’t fight corruption by fighting corruption, and (c) the public sector and the politicians are not the only culprit. The realities of corruption are much complex, with too many private interests and power brokers.
In his survey of global anti-corruption practice and literature, Daniel Kaufmann, of Brookings Institute & former World Bank Director, notes that creation of ‘commissions’ and ‘ethics agencies’, and the incessant drafting of new laws, decrees, and codes of conduct have little impact. These measures “are often politically expedient ways of reacting to pressures to do something about corruption, substituting for the need for fundamental and systemic governance reforms.”
It is useful to flag here economist Asad Saeed’s argument published in Lums Social Science and Policy Bulletin (summer 2010 edition). He argues that if Pakistan must embark on an effective and sustainable anti-corruption drive, then some level of agreement across different power brokers is necessary to ensure that accountability happens across the board. For instance, if a constitutional body is created, it should be able to oversee all aspects of corruption “with no group or entity outside its reach, including those with existing constitutional protection as well as members of the judiciary, the armed forces and elements of big business.”
The PTI, like any political party in power, has limited sources – time, energy, media space, citizen or voter attention, and political capital. For a country that faces a huge list of governance problems, it is better to fix the perception to prevent economic activities from stalling and instead focus more on policy and governance aspects such as, perhaps, the rolling out of politically-difficult VAT-mode taxation.
Comments
Comments are closed.