NEWS of the National Accountability Bureau nabbing Javed Burki provides good publicity for the government’s battle against corruption. NAB’s other catches in the recent past, which notched up the government’s ratings in its crusade against corruption, have included Admiral Mansurul Haq (the first four-star general to be arrested and tried on charges of corruption), former chairman of Pakistan Steel Mills Usman Farooqi and his bureaucrat brother Salman Farooqi, and former chairman of CBR Mian Iqbal Farid.

NAB’s expose of these and other white-collar crimes have earned the government a credible reputation — at least abroad — in the fight against corruption. The international corruption watchdog, Transparency International, had earlier this year appreciated the steps taken by Islamabad in the fight against corruption. These steps included NAB’s work, the devolution process, civil service reform and, not least, the government’s contracting of the services of a consultant to develop a “comprehensive” national anti-corruption strategy.

The biggest pat on the back for the government’s battle against corruption was Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2002 revealed last August. The index placed Pakistan at an improved position — 23rd most corrupt out of 102 countries — as compared to its position last year — 11th most corrupt out of 91 countries. On the CPI scale of 10 (least corrupt — most clean), corruption in Pakistan in the last twelve months had been reduced from 2.3 in 2001 to 2.6 in 2002.

But exactly how effective can the nabbing of big fish be in eradicating corruption in Pakistan?

A report published last year in an English daily about Admiral Mansurul Haq’s arrest had pointed out that many others in the armed forces involved in kickback deals were not being investigated by NAB. Similarly, there were many others in the civil administration who had not been made accountable by NAB.

Worse still are the recent reports in the press that some MNAs and MPAs have been cleared of either NAB charges or the financial irregularities exposed by the Ad Hoc Public Accounts Committee because they have joined the ruling party (PML-Q) or because they, like the PPP forward bloc members, voted in favour of PML-Q in the national and provincial assemblies.

The impression that corruption-tainted public leaders can escape indictment/conviction and even be rewarded with ministerial positions if they cooperate with the ruling group does no good to the government’s battle against corruption. In fact, it goes towards encouraging, rather than discouraging, corruption in the country.

Not only that, the government is actually instituting procedures and processes that facilitate or allow corrupt practices. For instance, the government’s recent decision to put Rs10 million at the disposal of every MNA as development grant for his constituency. The Punjab assembly has also announced a similar package for the MPAs.

Why put development funds at the disposal of hundreds of individual MNAs and MPAs, thus increasing the chances of misuse. Development grants should flow through established channels and agencies involved in the overall planning and implementation of development schemes in a particular constituency. Otherwise, there is the danger of funds being misappropriated or development projects like schools and health centres being built without the necessary staff or continued funding to run and maintain these institutions.

Another measure of the government that is likely to encourage corruption is the Punjab government’s decision to put five thousand posts in education and health sectors at the disposal of the MPAs to be filled on their recommendations. This decision will surely be the last nail in the coffin of recruitment through merit. It will help make recruitment through political interventions the norm rather than the exception.

Such measures go against the very spirit of reforms which the establishment has been implementing to eradicate corruption.

Pakistan’s battle against corruption, right from the time of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, from the Public Representatives Offices Disqualification Order to the Ehtesab Bureau and now NAB, has focussed on removing only certain corrupt people. It has done little by way of creating the national political will to get rid of corruption across the board or in promoting the ethics to improve accountability and fight corruption nationally.

Pakistan has come to be perceived, both at home and internationally, as a corrupt country with corruption being implicitly accepted at all levels across society. A recent survey by Transparency International of the five biggest countries in South Asia, including Pakistan, shows people see widespread corruption in seven basic public services, viz., land administration, tax authorities, judiciary, health, education, electricity, with police topping the list. In Pakistan, almost 92 per cent of the households surveyed said they had paid bribes to receive public education.

No single agency like NAB can effectively combat this kind of pervasive, omnipresent corruption. What the government needs to do, as some governments in Southeast Asia have done, is to adopt a holistic approach in promoting ethical standards among the people, and in the procedures and systems.

These standards will need to include principles such as meritocracy, incorruptibility, impartiality, integrity, openness, honesty, and loyalty. These standards should be articulated in codes of conduct and other government statutes meant to promote certain standards of behaviour among government servants and workers.

At the same time, human resource management processes will need to be improved through merit-based recruitment and promotion, systematic monitoring and enforcement of rules, a significant reduction of discretionary powers, and the punishment/removal of corrupt officials regardless of the amount they have accumulated. In other words, corruption should be made high risk.

A major challenge in the battle against corruption is also the need to provide better compensation packages to public sector employees — in the form of fixed remuneration and not discretionary funds or privileges that can be misused.

To ensure effectiveness of the anti-corruption drive, the government will also need to put teeth into, and thus strengthen, the powers and capacity of oversight institutions such as the Ombudsman Office, the Public Accounts Committees and the Auditor-General’s Office.

Finally, it must also ensure that the judiciary is independent, impartial and well-trained. To begin with, it should ensure that allowing a recently-appointed senior advisor to the federal government, who is a well-known lawyer, to continue with his law practice in private will not, in any way, compromise on the principles of justice when it comes to handing down judicial decisions in the highest court of law.

Any national anti-corruption strategy worth its salt will need to include a comprehensive programme of initiatives and innovations to promote and maintain ethical standards in the public sector. Only then can Pakistan hope to reduce the corruption plaguing society that has been responsible for successive governments’ ineffectiveness in delivering the goods in practically every sphere — from the police and the judiciary to enterprises like the PIA and Pakistan Steel Mills, and from education, health and housing to public utility provision.

A GOOD number of Orientalists and non-Muslims are under the impression that Islam is the religion of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) in the sense in which Buddhism is the religion of Buddha and Christianity is the religion of Christ. It is with this misconception that the word Muhammadanism has been frequently used by western historians and scholars. It is a great misnomer and has no place in Islamic terminology. This is really the creation of the medieval European writers.

Islam brought a new concept and ideal of religion. The Islamic deity is not merely ‘God’ (IIah), but Allah, who is the possessor of all dimensions of highest excellence and of absolute perfection. He is the fountainhead of all values and ideals. He is the omnipotent, the omniscient, the infinite, the one and the indivisible God, who has no partner, son or compeer. He is transcendent in His being and immanent in the cosmos through his knowledge, power and love. He is the creator, the sustainer, the nourisher and the evolver of everything that constitutes the cosmos.

The divine Book, Al-Quran, has constantly diverted man’s attention to the vast and limitless universe, there to find the clue to the religion of God. It disclosed a theory of life on lines compatible with things in nature. The Book unravelled the human heart. It laid down a code whereby to work out our nature. It admitted certain modes of worship emphasising the all-essential facts that the glory of God lay in the edification of man.

“It is not righteousness that ye turn your faces to the East and the West; but righteous is he who believeth in Allah and the last day and the angels and the scripture and the Prophets; and giveth his wealth, for love of him, to kins folk and to orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and to those who ask, and to set slaves free; and observeth proper worship and payeth the poor due (Zakat). And those who keep their treaty (or promise) when they make one, and the patient in tribulation and adversity and time of stress.” (2:177).

The above quoted verse distinguishes between a formal and a practical piety; it sets forth the essence of religion (Deen), which is faith (Iman) in Allah, and goodwill towards man.

Religion, as a whole comprises two aspects of human life-Deen (religion) and Mazhab (pathway), the abstract and the concrete. While Deen represents the fundamental conception or creed of man about the universe and its creator, Mazhab denotes the complex of rules, customs, conventions and institutions, hymns, ceremonials and offerings which govern human life in its manifold spheres. While Deen in its nature has always been one and universal, absolute and permanent, Mazhab has largely been divergent, regional, temporary and conditional in its character. Thus every Prophet while proclaiming the same Deen, had to adopt a different Mazhab in order to meet the particular demands of time, place, the stage of human progress and advancement and the specific requirements, of different peoples, separated from one another by the barriers of geographical, racial, national, cultural, linguistic and political divisions.

The scripture of Islam, the Quran, is not a collection of dogmas, but a code of life. It is not a voluminous treatise on theism, but a social, penal, commercial, civil, military, judicial, international and yet a religious code, which regulates everything that a human being has to do for his welfare from the cradle to the grave. Though it gives solution to all important problems of human life, and provides for every contingency of human affairs, it is wonderfully laconic. It is the masterpiece of the Arabic language and is extolled throughout the world for the simple grandeur of its diction, the chaste elegance of its style and the variety and magnificence of its imageries.

Unlike the scriptures of other religions, the Quran has come down to us in its pristine purity, genuine, undefiled and unchallenged. Its teaching is purely rational; there is nothing dogmatic in it. It inculcates the noblest ideals of monotheism, universalism, democracy, fraternity, liberty and unity. It was first scripture of its kind to proclaim the Unity of God and the equality of men.

The three basic unities on which the entire structure of the Quranic message may be said to have been founded are: (1) Tauhid-i-Ummah- Oneness of the nationality of mankind; (2) Tauhid-i-Rabubiat- Oneness of the Rab, the Creator, Sustainer, Evolver and Guardian of all; (3) Tauhid-i-Ibadat- Oneness of worship and the singleness of Almighty to Whom all should submit and surrender their entire selves.

Although the differences of country, colour, race and language have divided mankind into thousands of groups they all constitute only one family of the house of Adam and Eve and one nationality of the human species. The one Absolute and Eternal reality of God cannot be changed by giving him different names in different languages and by worshipping Him by different methods in different temples. When man’s Creator is one, he should recognise His absolute sovereignty and worship him and surrender himself to him alone.

One of the distinctive features of Islam is its simplicity. Its teaching is not shrouded in myths and stories and has nothing mysterious, nothing irrational, nothing impractical, nothing unattainable in it. It appeals to the intellect as well as to the natural sentiments in man. It is perfect and it may be said to have been writ large on the face of nature, from the gigantic sun to the tiniest blade of grass.

SOMEHOW, if you have a knack for speeches that lack substance, visit the NWFP Assembly these days. If anything, the speeches are simply boring. Member after member rise on a point of order but their speeches are strikingly similar.

Gone are the days when discussions in the NWFP Assembly used to be lively and engaging. The new members obviously will take time to master the art of speech-making. But for now at least, most of them appear to have taken a back seat.

Why blame the treasury benches only, the opposition too seems to have joined ranks with the government. They all look keen on supporting the government on ‘Islamising’ the society, at least this is what they pretend.

Therefore, when the vote of confidence for the chief minister was taken through voice and not through a show of hand, it did not come as a big surprise. And not unexpectedly, Akram Khan Durrani received the vote of confidence amid muted ‘nos’ and loud ‘ayes.’ In fact, so muffled was the ‘no’ to the motions regarding vote of confidence that it encouraged many a treasury member to claim that it had been carried unanimously.

Not that Durrani was facing any threat. Far from it, he is comfortably settled in the chief minister’s house enjoying every moment of it. He insists he is a simple villager who says what he believes in. But he is not as simple a man as he pretends to be. He is an old player and knows how to strike a balance between conflicting interests and is, therefore, keeping everybody in good humour.

His sweet talk has endeared him to the Walis of Walibagh which he visited this month. Fazlur Rehman is his leader but he has nonetheless met the chief of the rival Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) faction, Maulana Samiul Haq. And his exercise in good conduct paid off in the end — an overwhelming vote of confidence in him. The rules of the game had been set in advance. There was no show of hand. Not that the opposition members were any scared of losing. They would have lost the vote anyway. The fact was that they did not want to be seen voting for him and, hence, the muffled ‘no.’

What, however, ensued was pure boredom. It sounded as if the members were reading out from a prepared text. To cap it all, Durrani repeated verbatim his ‘policy’ speech upon his election as leader of the house last month. He seems stuck in aman-o-amaan (law and order) — a word that invariably finds its way in every sentence he utters. And he has his own peculiar way of pronouncing it — aman-o-amaan.

Guess what his definition of aman-o-amaan is. Somehow, he has been made to believe that ‘obscenity’ tops the list of crimes in the NWFP. Even the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammad Saeed Khan, who, otherwise, has done little to improve the law and order situation in the province was found nodding when Durrani issued the directive to the administration to check fahashi aur uryani in the province.

The police chief is a great survivor and for good reasons. He has survived Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, notwithstanding the flakes he would get from his boss of yesterday. In all likelihood, he could see his day through with this government before he throws in the towel in September next year and says goodbye to a demoralised police force.

It, therefore, suits both the chief minister and the police chief when it comes to the definition of aman-o-amaan. Quick, therefore, was the IGP who personally supervised the drive against ‘obscenity’ in Peshawar last week. A job that could have been well-handled by an SHO was carried by the IGP himself. The next day newspapers saw him accompanied by the SSP pulling down billboards from the city’s cinema halls. Henceforth, he declared, cinema billboards would carry the names of the film and filmstars only.

It is another thing, that one of the city’s cinema halls, notorious for screening hard porn, has been spared the raid.

So, after banning taverns and gambling dens, this was yet another feat performed by Chief Minister Durrani in his zest to Islamise the society in the NWFP. It is another matter that bootlegging has flourished and the number of alcohol consumers has increased due to winter and music continues to be played in commercial vehicles. All praise, however, to the IGP who has carried out the orders ‘efficiently’.

Everything is not as rosy as the chief minister would want it to believe. Tongues have started wagging too soon for this government. True or false, there are rumours aplenty, the grumbling within the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), the Jamaat-i-Islami feeling uneasy with the cabinet colleagues from the JUI-F, the alleged meddling by a brother of an MMA leader and two others and the wheeling-dealing that goes on with the Senate elections.

And lest one ignores, Hafiz Akhtar Ali forgot to say his Azaan in the house for the second day running. The man, who had called for prayers while the house was still in session last month, has changed after becoming a minister for Haj & Auqaf. Also, if someone would advise Sardar Idrees to resist the temptation of rising from his seat every now and then and speaking on a point of order. He is a minister now and, therefore, needs to be a bit more patient.

KAWISH while quoting the Sindh secretary for forests and environment that 2.2 million acre of land in the kutcha area will be leased out to foreign companies for corporate farming, terms it as a controversial decision, which is related to environment on the one hand and to the fate of our landless peasantry on the other. Everybody knows that very a limited area is earmarked for forests in Sindh (as well as other provinces), which is contributing towards rapid degradation of the environment. The decision to lease out kutcha land to foreign companies will result into vanishing of the forests, spread on the banks of the Indus from Guddo to Kharo Chhan. This will be a formidable environmental disaster, which should not be invited at any cost.

Besides, in rural Sindh there are large number of landless peasants, who deserve the kutcha land more than foreign companies. As far as the people of the under-developed countries are concerned, the role of the multinational companies has never been commendable. The entry of the exploitative MNCs into the agriculture sector will weaken the position of the local farmer community. The foreign companies will control choice of crops, their prices and local market and eliminate the bio-diversity of our agriculture, and the agriculture sector will not remain a domain of the local growers.

The government should not erase forests of the kutcha land, since they are not only crucial for environment but also a source of livelihood for the residents of the area. Similarly the idea of leasing out land to the MNCs should also be abandoned as it will prove harmful in the long run.

Ibrart says that Sindh Chief Minister Ali Mohammad Mahar has acknowledged water shortage in the province and said that he has invited his counterpart from Punjab to come to Karachi and discuss the issue of the distribution of Indus water with him. It is encouraging that the new CM, at least, recognizes that Sindh is not getting its share of the Indus water and he feels that an inter-provincial dialogue should be arranged on this issue. Mr Mahar’s promise to secure Sindh’s due share of water has built a dam against the flood of hopelessness, felt by the farmer community of the water-starved province. It is hoped that the CM will keep this issue on the top of his priority list and will make concrete efforts to save Sindh from famine of water.

Another issue, which requires special attention of the CM is the National Finance Commission, adds Sindhu. He should convince the federal government that the award should not be based on the population of the provinces, but on the tax revenue, provided by each province.

According to Tameer-i-Sindh, two other burning issues of Sindh, inherited by the new provincial administration, are law and order and unemployment. Both the problems are inter-related. Capital flies away from a place which does not have peace, and good governance is must for restoration of peace. However, peace cannot be restored simply by statements. It needs a multi-dimensional strategy, implemented by a team of competent administrators with the cooperation of the people. Similarly, efforts are also needed to create job opportunities for the unemployed youth of the province.

Last but not the least is the plight of our womenfolk, which also draws the attention of the new Sindh government. Hilal-i- Pakistan writes that the problems of the women of the country cannot be solved merely by giving them 33 per cent seats in the assemblies. In our society, where violence against women is rampant, the status of a woman is not better than a slave. The basic reason for this phenomenon is the feudal/tribal character of our society, which helps keep women illiterate and economically dependent on their menfolk.