Our system needs to shed the people who cheat on their taxes every year
GENERAL Pervez Musharraf’s latest overdrive to his people is to follow their Quaid’s golden rule of unity, faith and discipline.
Go tell this to your clique of cabinet members and the bibulous bureaucrats serving them, one can turn around and say. Not to be missed out are several scores of military men marshalled for civilian jobs of import. They too need to hew to their chief’s advice. Also, take a stab at your uniformed top brass, who consider themselves above censure.
Why just expect ordinary Pakistanis to live a prayerful life of unity, faith and discipline when the leaders and their laws be so crooked?
Straighten them out first, Mr president. Start with adherence to the laws of the land. Sanitize the judge, fumigate the court, power-wash the law and sack the corrupt.
‘None is above the law’ should be writ in stone and drilled on doors at the courthouse. And anyone trying to bend the law should be doubly charged and prosecuted.
“All rise for Judge Philip Maenza,” announces the sheriff of a local court in New Jersey. The assembled stand to attention, as the judge hurries in, smiles and says, “welcome to my court, please be seated.”
We are all present because of summons from the court for breaking the law. Some are there for traffic violations, others for breaking building rules, some others for disorderly behaviour. Men and women, well dressed and sober, all white except, for one or two, sit silently.
The time is 9am half an hour before the judge arrives, a policewoman (real toughie) addresses us to advise that the prosecutor is sitting next door — “if you have any questions or enter into a plea bargain, then he’s your man, go to him, he’s on your side”.
Information is power, they say. In Pakistan, the system is such that those who know the rules never guide or lead people to the right place, unless their dirty filthy palms get greased first.
Pakistan government does not believe in putting up signs to facilitate the hapless hoi polloi running around like scared chickens looking for a mother hen at sarkari daftars.
Sitting behind the chair is the prosecutor. A clean looking, humane-faced man — a bit on the burly side. Seeing him, one’s comfort level goes up a notch or two.
“Since it’s your first time offence, you have two choices,” he says to me, “either plead guilty, pay the $200 fine with an additional penalty of $233 to remove the four points that you have got on your driver’s license for over speeding in a 25MPH zone or not pay $233 and have two instead of four points remain on your driver’s license.”
In America, without car insurance, you cannot drive. It’s illegal and you can lose your driver’s license if you are caught. The premium for the insurance is pretty steep and should you get (penalty) points for traffic violation, then it jumps up.
So, I decide to cough up the $433 fine plus penalty and keep my driving record clean. I am directed to pay the fine at the window of the municipal court cum police station and then wait inside the court for the judge to finally dispose off my case.
First come first served (so unlike Pakistan, where lines get jumped all the time by those getting special handling).
Since I am the first to arrive and meet with the prosecutor, Judge Maenza calls my name out, briefly reads the summons and my guilty plea, asks if I have understood everything and whether there be any other questions, adjudicates the case, gives a big cheesy smile and says that he’s sure I’ll be more careful while driving in future. End of story.
The fines collected each day must run into thousands. Where, pray, does the money go? Not in the stomach of some fat thanedar or parcelled among police people starting from right at the top, as is the unfettered greed back home. The money here goes directly to the town treasury.
Policemen in US don’t get paid a princely salary. Still they live pretty decently. I had a cop come to mow my yard each week when he was off duty. His family owned a landscaping business and he helped out whenever. Imagine a sentry badshah moonlighting as a mali in Islamabad!
Pakistan has experimented with many police reforms in the past. All have been a colossal failure. Corruption, brutality, criminalization and savagery are sadly the hallmarks of our police psyche.
For the VIP of the day, it’s a salute and click of heels; for the nonentity, it’s physical and verbal abuse.
How does ‘unity, faith and discipline’ pretty up the picture in such an unequal relationship between the powerless and powerful?
Forget any protection from police victimization. Not so in America. You have the right to stay silent, refuse to be searched without a warrant, ask for an attorney, refuse to answer questions put to you by the cops ...
On the roadside, if waylaid by a moustachioed cop, back in Pakistan, can you imagine keeping mum? Can you imagine asking for an attorney? Not a hope in hell! He’d beat you black and blue and let forth a volley of horny abuses — never mind if you happen to be a woman driver! Women to them are akin to jangli janwar.
Grounded is a system in America; it runs smoothly, corking corruption on the way by blocking out bribery and stonewalling wrongdoing from the process.
Each year, paying your income tax around this time is a serious ritual. Everyone — citizen and non-citizen — has to pay the federal and state tax. No one is exempt.
Dare to cheat? Only if you want to go to prison. The IRS (Internal Revenue Service) has an inexorably long arm to fish you out should you misreport your earnings. Everything is in the open, you can’t hide anywhere ... your bank sends one copy of your annual statement to you and one to the IRS directly.
Filing your taxes electronically is a seamless operation. You can do it yourself or get a tax consultant to do it for you at a nominal sum. There’s no baksheesh involved ... the consultant can’t cook your tax books for you (unless he’s suicidal).
Our tax dollars go direct to Uncle Sam. In Pakistan, the tax officer and the consultant are in bed together to cook the books and bilk the government of its rightful money to become millionaires overnight.
For proof — overbought is real estate in Islamabad by crooks with truckloads of black money to luxuriate in the best homes their dirty money can buy. You don’t need the useless NAB — the national accountability bureau wearing blinkers — to catch them or spend millions in forensic science to follow their trail — these men are visible as daylight and flaunt a flourishing lifestyle seen from miles, invisible only to the dimwits at NAB.
Let’s just scrutinize the tax returns of our ‘lovers of democracy’: Benazir Bhutto, Asif Zardari, Nawaz Sharif and his clan, Pervez Musharraf, the current cabinet ministers, army generals and big businessmen. No surprises here! Most of these zealots pay a piddling sum to the government as income tax. Shame on all of them!
In America, they would be behind bars, disqualified from public office forever. But in Pakistan, we continue to clone these cheats like a deformed joke.
Unity, faith and discipline will thus remain a virtual word panoply until our system sheds the corrupt cop, ITO (income tax officer), tax consultants and VIPs (politicians, defence personnel, industrialists) who cheat on their taxes every year.
Our system needs to shed the people who cheat on their taxes every year 
