FOLLOWING the publication of Transparency International's damning report on Pakistan, a newspaper's banner headline declared the country to more corrupt in 2010 than in the previous year.

The ensuing discourse in the media seems fallaciously to suggest that we Pakistanis are congenitally prone to improprieties and therefore all holders of public office as well as those involved in business, land and finance are guilty of malpractice. Indeed, our national discourse on morality signifies three fallacies. One, that public corruption is a reflection of the personal character of rulers, hence change the 'corrupt' rulers. This idea has caused much damage to our political system but it refuses to go away having received more cogency when linked to the examples of the pious rulers of the early Islamic age.

States like Pakistan, Iraq or Afghanistan are mired in corruption because it is politically expedient for the beneficiaries of malpractices to stress on personal morality rather than fixing the administrative and legal order. Article 62(f) of the constitution is a case in point. inter alia ameen

Introduced by Gen Ziaul Haq, it requires would-be legislators, , to be “sagacious, righteous and non-profligate and honest, and ”. But the requisite socio-cultural and political environment was denied to implement these rarefied stipulations.

Instead, a ritualism of public morality has been maintained. Bureaucrats are sacked as a mark of moral rectitude by every populist civil and military ruler and then reinstated on court orders. Political leaders are prosecuted or imprisoned but soon they return through elections or 'deals' with their persecutors. And bank defaulters are nabbed and then released after plea bargains.The second fallacy is that corruption thrives in the absence of laws or their enforcement. In fact, corruption often thrives because of laws and their over-implementation. Many of the anti-corruption laws and institutions are person- or group-specific, selective in their operation and abjectly unfair. For instance Gen Musharraf's NAB Ordinance promised across-the-board accountability, but it exempted the armed forces from its ambit.

Likewise Article 25 of the constitution ensures equality of citizens and protection of law. But true to the old colonial traditions of state patronage, the bureaucrats, generals, judges and politicians have their special quotas of public-subsidised plots and other lucrative options. According to a report submitted in the Senate 65 bureaucrats and 53 judges were given plots during 1985-2001; some of them got two plots each. A recent report suggests 450 plots are being given away to bureaucrats.

This raises the question of fairness. If plots are awarded on 'service', then all state functionaries are entitled to them. If the criterion is 'office', then it is a clear infraction of Article 25. Deplorably, instead of abolishing this discriminatory practice the list of beneficiaries has been extended to journalists, businessmen and the rural and urban elite. roti, kapra aur makan

No such 'legal' arrangement, however, exists for the common man despite the fact that as many as 30 million people are either shelter-less or accommodated by their kin. Where are the champions of and the custodians of the “dignity of man” as guaranteed under Article 14?

The third fallacy is that the state/government has the responsibility to enforce public morality. The state/government in fact finds an alibi to circumvent moral imperatives of state policy in national security, ideology and the slogan that the 'people's welfare is supreme'. It is the people, media, international watchdogs, writers, poets and actors that keep the state from committing repression and corruption. No wonder rights activists have historically faced the wrath of dogmatic and corrupt regimes.

Adolf Hitler first won over public support on the negative sentiments of the Treaty of Versailles that had been unjustly imposed upon Germany, but then used the Nazi goons and state apparatus to crush a minority opposition branding them as Jews, communists and criminals.

In the end he successfully brainwashed the social 'morality' of a generation of Germans, particularly young impressionable minds, by inculcating a false German sense of superiority and spreading pathological venom against other races.

Pakistan's state morality has also evolved from the negative sentiments nurtured on real and perceived internal and external enemies. The 'good' is what is good for the state, disregarding the people. Cruel dictators have been glorified as 'pious'. Morality and security are treated as synonymous. The dismissed elected prime ministers were not only corrupt but also security risks. Morality is defined narrowly, in quantitative not qualitative terms: the National Assembly speaker is wrong if she buys expensive tyres for her official car. But purchasing a fleet of 14 F-16s costing $40m each by this poor country is absolutely right.

However, the economic, social and political cost of this state morality is enormous. Violence, terrorism and war have rent apart the social fabric; public finances are in a shambles through profligacy, cronyism and corruption; the defence expenditure, a huge percentage of our total tax revenues and the billions of dollars received during decades of authoritarian rule remain out of the public audit. And yet as a corollary democracy is made out to be a failure.

The spin doctors are busy weaving new 'models' of governance, forgetting the numerous experiments of the past, and ignoring yet again history's lesson that there is only one path to fight corruption in a modern state: democracy, fairness and universal application of the law. Only then would the sacred cows be slaughtered in the abattoir of good governance. But alas even some ace politicians are ready to forget history's lesson, let alone the apologists of authoritarianism. shahabusto@hotmail.com