In 2011 Pakistan retained its place within the upper echelons of the world’s most corrupt countries. The scale of the problem was such that the wrongfulness of the acts of public-office holders appeared to be a secondary issue compared to their consequences for citizens and the state. And given Pakistan’s lack of a functional accountability infrastructure, investigations into these acts led to frequent face-offs between the executive and the judiciary.
Along with mismanagement, it was corruption that continued to cripple public sector enterprises such as Pakistan International Airlines, Pakistan Railways, Pakistan Steel Mills and the National Insurance Corporation Limited through the appointment and retention of incompetent and excessive staff and tainted procurement practices. The Supreme Court found in 2011 that the awarding of contracts for rental power projects was not transparent and ordered RPPs to return billions in mobilisation advances to the national exchequer. Rioting has already begun over this winter’s gas loadshedding, and various gas-dependent industries have been crippled by rationing. Yet tenders for gas extraction projects have so far been recalled four times over the last few years. If lucrative projects cannot be awarded to favourites, they aren’t awarded at all.
The Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz had documented within the Charter of Democracy their resolve to establish an independent accountability commission headed by an impartial chairman appointed with bipartisan support. Now into the final quarter of its term, the ruling regime still failed to make good on this commitment. The Holders of Pubic Office (Accountability) Bill has been pending with the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Law and Justice for over 30 months and is as good as dead.
In the absence of a non-partisan institutional mechanism for accountability driven by the executive, Pakistan is left with a makeshift system: the media discloses tales of misfeasance and nonfeasance involving holders of public office and the judiciary takes account where it feels the media has brought to light a matter of public importance involving fundamental rights. The holding to account of occupants of high public office for misdeeds thus continued to create the perception of conflict between the executive and the judiciary in 2011.
The Haj corruption scandal, for instance, in which Pakistani pilgrims were fleeced in exchange for sub par facilities in 2010, resulted in the arrest of the federal minister for religious affairs and brought to the fore allegations of corruption against the prime minister’s son. The scandal involving kickbacks from shady NICL real-estate dealings led to the prosecution of the son of new PPP ally and Minister for Industries Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi. It also implicated PPP loyalist and Commerce Minister Makhdoom Amin Fahim — who expressed ignorance over Rs41m that had shown up in his bank account and offered to return the money to the Federal Investigation Agency — and resulted in a tussle between the executive and judiciary over the role of FIA Assistant Director General Zafar Qureshi, who was investigating the case. Meanwhile, the FIA chief was changed twice in 2011 (and for the third time in a year).
In the case of the National Reconciliation Ordinance the government continued to avoid resuming corruption investigations against President Asif Ali Zardari, even after the SC rejected in November the government’s review plea filed against the 2009 apex-court judgment that had struck down the NRO. But the story isn’t over yet; in January 2012 fresh hearings will re-open this ongoing saga.
Greed aside, the state of corruption in Pakistan exposed the gulf between the expected role of public-office holders in a constitutional democracy and the depraved role perceived by our ruling elite. An incumbent government is not free to distribute state largess at will to replenish its patronage network. State enterprises cannot be crammed with party workers in the name of creating employment.
But the brand of corruption maintained by the ruling PPP-led regime was so brash and endemic that it did not qualify as grease money or an exaction merely raising the cost of doing business. It defined our system of governance as well as our political and social ethos. Probably the most harmful aspect of the corrupt who persevered this year is that they degraded standards of acceptable conduct in public life, debased the social ethos and threatened to erase the distinction between right and wrong.
— Babar Sattar is an Islamabad-based lawyer