| 29 April 2004 | Thursday | 08 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425 |
The ultimate price
Inaugurating an international conference on the UN convention against corruption in Islamabad earlier this month, Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali was candid in his views about the universality of corruption. He made a distinction between "soft" corruption and "hard" corruption, but fell short of specifying their contours.
Mr Jamali noted in his speech that "political patronage is part and parcel of the democratic policy and should not be equated with corruption. Only when it goes beyond a limit does it become objectionable."
These remarks were delivered extempore as the prime minister put the text of his speech aside and spoke from the heart. This took his audience, comprising people fighting corruption in a number of countries, by surprise. It also made way for a logical debate and rise to several questions about the contours of those limits that Mr Jamali had outlined.
Should they be in terms of volume of money lost or the percentage of the transactions of money involved, was one query. Another question was who should set those limits, and how? Should that be done through the Constitution, by Parliament or the judiciary or through conventions which can be flexible or violable?
The most obvious point gleaned from Mr Jamali's speech was the official acceptance of a volume of corruption in the workings of government with the only issue for debate being the quantum or the limits permissible.
There were no answers to such questions - either from the prime minister or the galaxy of people attending - as the speakers went about reading their papers in respect to the intricacies of corruption and its legal challenges.
The prime minister, who was in his element, did not end there. He also challenged his audience to give him the example of a country in which the ruling party does not give patronage to its members.
"Name any country in the world that does not do this," said the prime minister. He then went on to press his point home: "But a line has to be drawn between political patronage and corruption."
Mr Jamali then gave the example of the United States, where he claimed that the new president inducted 52,000 of his partymen in key offices after removing the previous occupants of those offices.
But the US pattern is unique and is not common to other western societies. They have their permanent service officials, complete with permanent under-secretaries, who play second fiddle to the new rulers, as in Britain or much of Europe.
Coming back to Mr Jamali. If the prime minister holds what is done in the US as not improper, then former prime minister Benazir Bhutto should not be prosecuted for appointing a number of party officials in PIA.
Earlier, political parties in power used to dump a number of their workers in Pakistan Steel and some other public sector industries. The successor governments would not only remove them but also sought to initiate cases against the ministers who sanctioned their appointment.
Political patronage is not necessarily a part of democratic polity. It has instead become to some extent a part of the democratic process; but that has to be within the limits of rationality and justice.
When the voters are largely illiterate and divided into biradaris, sects, castes, tribes, and language and under the influence of leaders of various religious inclinations, some persons become localized group leaders. These leaders then offer to sell their votes in blocks to prospective candidates. Corporate or political patronage of various kinds begin from that stage in a developing country.
And when a new administration comes to power in the US, its senior officials are screened by the senate judicial committee for days together. Inappropriate candidates are rejected or withdrawn. Two of the candidates for the post of attorney general, who were women, withdraw their candidature one after the other, when it was found they had employed illegal immigrant women as domestic help.
In Pakistan this would not be considered a major offence by a ministerial candidate of any kind. In fact we do not look into the background of any ministerial candidate. Even defaulters of large bank loans investigated by the National Accountability Bureau and those on the Exit Control List have become top ministers.
The Prime Minister may be happy or relieved by the fact that there is no "absolutely corruption-free" country in the world so no one can point his finger at Pakistan on that count. But that satisfaction brings no relief to the poor of Pakistan, who number about 40 per cent of the populace, and who live below the poverty line of a dollar a day.
Much of that poverty is due to corruption. Corruption in water distribution that makes their crops fail, corruption in the police services which makes them suffer, corruption in the education system which keeps their children illiterate and corruption in the economic system which deprives them of employment or livelihood.
In the same conference, President Musharraf told his audience that the poor had reasons to be corrupt. That is the general belief as well. Another fact is that it is not only the rich that exploit the poor but also the poor who exploit each other.
The police constable who exploits the poor and makes exorbitant demands on them is also poor. The peon who demands a bribe from the poor man wanting to see an official to right some wrong is also poor. The teachers who do not turn up in schools to teach the children of the poor are also poor.
The President says that he had allowed the poor in Kutchi Abadis to use kunda for drawing power free. But the fact is that when such facilities are given free in the name of the poor, rich contractors or gang leaders spring up in such areas, occupy a large number of Jughis and rent them out to the poor again at high rates.
Low salaries are usually mentioned as a cause of corruption. The President too, deliberated on that. He said that under him, government salaries had been increased twice. The first time it cost the exchequer Rs. 25 billion and the second time Rs. 14 billion.
Now he had Rs. 50 billion of the extra revenues to spend on that. But while the revenues this year have risen to Rs. 510 billion from Rs. 459 billion last year, the budgeted expenditure has also risen correspondingly.
In fact, there is a budget deficit of four per cent of the GDP which has been covered by external and domestic borrowing. So there is no scope for large give-aways as enhanced salaries.
The eternal problem with enhancing salaries is the fact that the number of government servants is disproportionately high. Inclusive of the defence forces and the provincial government staff, government salaries exceed Rs. 4 billion.
That makes giving the existing government officials increments a tough task. It is easy for the government to double the salaries and perquisites of ministers and members of Parliament and enlarge the size of the cabinet as well; but impossible to increase the salaries of the 4 million employees adequately.
And yet there is political and social pressure to recruit more persons for government service because of the acute unemployment problem in the country.
President Musharraf has some figures of his own to share. In his estimation, 10 per cent of the official employees are "very corrupt" while other 10 per cent are incorruptible. In his belief, there are 80 per cent in the middle, who swing in-between.
The fact is that inflation, which has been a constant feature of our life, forces some people to become corrupt. The common practice of living beyond one's means with impunity makes the middle 80 per cent drift towards corruption.
Along with the over four million official employees, there are almost half the number of pensioners who feel they are getting a raw deal, particularly the civilian pensioners. In this, old pensioners who are given a raw real while the rather new pensioners get better scales. There is real heartburn among the pensioners on this account.
The President says while the salaries of the low paid employees should be raised, the perks of the privileged classes should be cut. "That is the right approach. The wasteful perquisites cost a great deal to the state. And the cut in perks should begin with the army, including the too many batmen provided to the military officers," says General Musharraf.
A better option would be to pay government employees all-inclusive packages and letting them take the houses on rent they like or choose the cars they prefer and put the savings in their savings accounts. That will reduce waste in government services and official ostentation a great deal.
Some corrupt people have reached Parliament and they are hindering the working of the government, according to the President. He did not say whether they were hindering the working of the government from within it or from the opposition.
They may have reached parliament one way or another but one question that goes unanswered is that who made them ministers and gave them key portfolios, like Interior and Defence? The government cannot shy away from responsibility in this regard.
The President has also spoken of "environmental contradictions" which he called weakness of the accountability system. Be he did make this comment without specifying what these contradictions were. The process of accountability under the NAB became flawed the moment the armed forces and the judiciary were excluded from its purview.
In defence, President Musharraf said that the army had an in built accountability system which is very harsh and it has its checks and balances, and so is the case with the judiciary.
In addition, the retired army personnel were accountable to the NAB. But that does not seem to convince or satisfy the people who want equal treatment for all who happen to be in the state employment, including the judiciary which has been the target of increasing public criticism in recent times.
The minimum that can be done is enabling the NAB investigate charges against the military or judicial personnel and place the fundings before their own tribunals for awarding punishment.
The need of the hour is transparency in the working of official institutions and their decisions. The investigating and convicting institutions should be totally above board.
A tragic feature of our public life is that certain officials who are supposed to protect various institutions take the lead themselves in committing offences or plundering the same institutions. Look at what happened at the privatized Bankers Equity, or the National Development Finance Corporation, the Emirates Bank and the Allied Bank! The worst offenders have been their own top personnel.
Look at the number of crimes committed by police officials from the constables upwards! Look at the number of rape cases in which they have figured, besides other crimes. When the guardians of law become its primarily violators who can save such institutions?
Prime Minister Jamali says living beyond one's means is the root cause of corruption. When too much money can too easily be made and retained with impunity, the people want to live it up.
Far more striking is the fact that the top officials are too ready to patronise the corrupt and attend their lavish parties. They are seen rubbing shoulders with the "known corrupt". When the people see all that, they feel convinced that there is no stigma attached to the corrupt.
The corrupt say that they live in a country where the state itself lives beyond its means, through heavy borrowing externally and domestically. And the ruling VVIPs allow their photographs to be published with them in newspapers. Unless a revolution changes this culture, it seems nothing will change.
The ultimate price
It has to rank as the ultimate betrayal: urging soldiers to fight for their country, and then refusing to acknowledge the sacrifices they make. When the motive behind both is political, it becomes unforgivable.
Last week Americans, incredibly, saw the first ever pictures of their war dead coming home. Several papers featured a shot of the inside of a cargo plane with row upon row of coffins, all draped in the distinctive red and blue of the Stars and Stripes. Others showed soldiers unloading coffins from aeroplanes.
The soldiers who went, first to Afghanistan and then to Iraq, to fight America's wars went for many reasons. Some enlisted because - with little education and a poor working class background - they had few options.
For them, the army offered their one chance of job security and a career. Others joined because they always wanted to be a soldier. Still others joined in the patriotic fervour generated by the attacks of 9/11.
People like Pat Tillman, who turned down a multi-million dollar football deal with the Arizona Cardinals to fight alongside his brother in Afghanistan. Many reasons for going but all meeting the same fate: all returned in coffins to Dover Air Force base, Delaware.
If I was a soldier killed in action, or if my brother or husband was a soldier killed in action, I would want my brother's/my husband's sacrifice to be acknowledged by my country. I would want to be honoured. I would want a proper reception when I came home. I would want leaders to - if not attend my funeral - at least acknowledge my courage, my death.
For America's dead soldiers, however, there is no such reception, let alone honour. They arrive in purdah at Dover Air Force base. From there they are quietly passed onto their families for burial.
No trumpet, no fanfare (President George Bush has not attended a single soldier's funeral): just bury them and forget about them. Contrast their reception and treatment with that of the victims of 9/11.
Almost three years on, those victims are still fresh in the mind: honoured with memorials, tributes and endless media coverage. Why are America's war dead treated so differently?
The answer from the Pentagon is simple: "We have to remember the interests of the families and their privacy and their sensitivity during these tough times." In other words, photos of their dead sons, brothers and husbands coming home would be too distressing for the families.
Sounds logical, except when one tries to see what can be distressing in a picture of a coffin, draped in the American flag, being carried off a plane by American soldiers? Surely such photos commemorate the sacrifice they made; surely such photos give the families a sense of pride even as they grieve. And surely the pictures coming out of Iraq - of destroyed, burning American jeeps and trucks, vehicles in which American soldiers were killed - are infinitely more distressing?
One also has to question the logic of the Pentagon's argument when the families themselves are criticizing government policy and asking for the return of their dead to be acknowledged. Does Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld really know better than the families themselves what is and what is not good for them? For that is the implication in the Pentagon ruling.
Or is it that the Pentagon and the Bush administration have other reasons not to publicize the arrival of coffin after coffin at Dover Air Force base? Could it be that they want to hide the fact that dozens of America's soldiers are returning home dead? Could it be they do not want the American people to see graphic proof of the consequences of their Iraq policy - over 700 US soldiers killed - and more are facing death in Iraq.
In fact, the Pentagon's 'concern' for the families is just a cover for its actual concern about domestic public opinion and, in an election year, for President Bush's chances of winning a second term.
Images of war dead, images of soldiers' coffins, stoke patriotic fervour and resolve when the numbers involved are in dozens, double figures. When they run into hundreds, however, they stoke questions and criticism: What are so many young people dying for? Who is responsible for their deaths?
For the president and his team those are infinitely uncomfortable questions. For not one of the many justifications for war presented by Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz or Powell has stood the test of time. Each one - fighting terrorism, Iraqi WMD, ending Saddam Hussein's cruelty (is the chaos that has succeeded it really any better?), promoting peace in the Middle East and democracy in the wider Arab world - has collapsed in bitter and bloody failure.
How does the president answer the families? More important, how does he answer the wider voting American public? He doesn't: he cannot. This is what explains the Pentagon's desperate attempt to suppress photos of the war dead coming home: it wants to avert the questions for which it has no answers.
The seven hundred-plus Americans killed in Iraq paid the ultimate price - not for the security or glory of their country - but to further the anti-Saddam agenda of George Bush, the neo-conservative agenda of Rumsfeld and his cabal, and the political ambitions of an administration that saw war (rather than the hard grind of generating socio-economic development at home) as the short-cut to a second presidential term.
This is the real tragedy and the real pain in seeing the pictures of coffin after coffin returning home: the fact that they died for a totally ignoble cause. America's war dead have passed the seven hundred mark.
A huge figure, no doubt, but a fraction of the Iraqi war dead. As the American people see the first pictures of their dead coming home and ponder over what so many died for, they should spare a thought for the thousands of Iraqi victims of Bush's war. Come November, those Iraqi statistics should figure alongside the number of Stars and Stripes-draped coffins in determining the choice they make.
Post-script: The manner in which the photos were eventually released speaks volumes for the docility and quiescence of the US media. Just one person - Russ Kick, running a website dedicated to promoting freedom of information - thought to ask for the pictures.
By some miracle (or some oversight for which someone in the US Air Force is now paying the price), the Air Force upheld his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (albeit on appeal) and gave him a CD with 351 images of the dead. Many more people should have pushed for those pictures many months ago.
iffatidris2000@yahoo.co.uk.