Pakistan racing to become No 1 most corrupt country

Sunday, October 24, 2010

ISLAMABAD: Corruption in Pakistan has attained new heights in 2010, as the country under the Zardari-Gilani duo, is said to have surpassed several other badly corrupt nations of 2009, it has been learnt.
A serious charge sheet of corruption against Pakistan is all set to be released by the Transparency International on Tuesday (October 26).
Sources in the World Bank (WB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB), which contribute to the preparation of the Transparency International report, told The News that corruption in Pakistan had massively increased during the last 12 months. “You will soon be hearing really bad news about Pakistan,” a source warned, disclosing that as against last year when Pakistan had slipped five ranks from the 47th most corrupt country in 2008 to 42nd, the 2010 scenario was much worse.
The sources said Pakistan’s downslide amongst the most corrupt nations was deeply depressing. “It seems the country (Pakistan) is fast racing to become number one on the list of the most corrupt nations,” a source commented.
Transparency International Pakistan Chairman Adil Gillani, when contacted, said the Transparency International was releasing its report in the afternoon of October 26. He, however, did not say what the report would bring for Pakistan.
The last report of the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2009 was released in November 2009, which showed 2.4 as Pakistan’s score. Out of 180 countries, Pakistan was ranked 42 in the list of most corrupt nations. In 2008, its ranking was 47.
According to the WB-ADB sources, reports of international organisations like WB, ADB, Bertelsmann Foundation Index (BTI), Economist Intelligence Unit, Freedom House and Global Insight, concerning the state of affairs in Pakistan, particularly in areas of governance and corruption, are really worrisome.
Sharing the details, the sources said the WB International Development Association (IDA) Ranking Resources Allocation Index, which in case of Pakistan was 29th out of 75 countries in 2009, has slipped by five countries this year and reached 24th out of 77 countries.
Quoting another sign, the sources said the ADB Composite Country Performance Rating (CCPR) had 12.79 score last year but this year this sore had come down to 12.20. Referring to yet another indication, the sources said the BTI, which adjudged Pakistan as 32nd out of 122 in 2009, this year found Pakistan’s rank to have slipped by 21 countries, to 112 out of 122 countries.
In an American survey released on October 14, 2010, Pakistan has been declared worst in Corruption and Access to Civil Justice. The Rule of Law Index, which assessed 35 countries around the world on nine key variables, suggested high-income countries generally respect the rule of law more than poor countries. In Asia-Pacific, Japan, Australia and Singapore scored well with the Philippines and Indonesia dragged down by weak justice systems and corruption. Pakistan was near the bottom of nearly every index, and worst in fundamental rights, corruption and access to civil justice.
The glaring proof of absence of the rule of law in Pakistan is clear from last one-year mega corruption cases of National Insurance Corporation, Pakistan Steel Mills and Rental Power Plants. The corruption cases have been taken up by the Supreme Court instead of the government and its top accountability apparatus — the National Accountability Bureau.
Pakistan, on the other hand, scored the lowest — 34th or 35th in five of the variables and 32nd or 33rd in three of the other four. In ‘order and security’, which dealt with the absence of crime and violence, it ranked 24th, higher than, among others, most of the Latin American and Sub-Saharan African countries covered in the survey.
Kenya, which though scored poorly in the survey, did best with respect to criminal justice, where it ranked 25th, ahead of most of the Latin American countries, Pakistan, Liberia and Nigeria.
International bodies have been advising Pakistan that it needs immediate enforcement of good governance and transparent administration, to counter the acute problem of corruption.
Pakistan Steel Mills, EOBI, PIA, Rental Power Plants, KESC, NIC, NHA, OGDC, PSO, Pepco, CDA, DP Division, DHAs, Pakistan Steel Mills, TCP, NBP and many other organisations are said to be facing serious corruption.

PM sees no corruption in his government

October 25, 2010

LAHORE: Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has ruled out corruption in the government, claiming that “these are mere allegations and wrong perceptions” and anybody having proof in this regard can move the court.
He was talking to a six-member Pakistan delegation of Journalists Association, UK, headed by Tahir Chaudhry, at his residence here on Sunday. A representative of a charity organisation “Muslim Hands” was also present on the occasion.
Gilani stressed upon the foreign-based Pakistani journalists to play an effective role in removing all misconceptions about Pakistan. He said that Pakistan was simultaneously facing a number of challenges and “we are already in the middle of the war against terrorism and facing an economic recession, while another disaster came in the shape of floods, which delayed the sensitisition of the world to Pakistan’s problems and destruction due to flood calamity”.
Pakistan is consistently seeking an access to American and European markets for trade, which means that we want to get rid of aid and are determined to improve the country’s economic health through enhanced global trade, he asserted.
Gilani appreciated the efforts of foreign-based Pak journalist for creating an awareness among the Pakistani diaspora about the flood victims, adding, “You have done a noble job and you should also make efforts to improve the country’s image in the comity of nations, particularly in the UK.”
The delegation told the prime minister that they had collected 32,000 pounds and they were distributing relief goods among the flood-hit people in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh.
Gilani said the government was following the same internationally-recognised strategy for the flood victims that was used for 2.5 million IDPs of Swat. Besides, he added, “We have established an Oversight Disaster Management Council (ODMC) in consultation with all the provinces at the Council of Common Interest (CCI) forum.”
He said that the federal government had shared the ownership of the Watan Cards (for flood victims) with the provinces to make them more authentic and credible. The prime minister said that the World Bank (WB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) would present their preliminary reports on the Disaster Need Assessment (DNA) within a few days and the final version in this regard probably next month.
The Pakistan Development Committee’s meeting has been convened mid next month, in which all the international donors and partners would make commitments according to the DNA report, which would enable us to know how much foreign aid Pakistan would be getting.
The donors were free to initiate flood relief projects on their own or to donate in the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund, he said.
The prime minister said that government had also decided to provide free of cost seeds, fertilisers and other agriculture inputs to the flood-hit farmers/growers having up to 25 acres of land.
The federal government, he said, was also conducting a poverty survey throughout Pakistan and on the basis of this survey, the poor people would be extended financial assistance, life and health insurance and other facilities under the Benazir Income Support Programme.
To a question, Gilani said that they always had great respect for the media and the PPP-led government maintained cordial relations with this vital pillar of the state. “We (politicians and media men) have struggled together for restoration of democracy, the rule of law and supremacy of parliament to make Pakistan a better place for its people to live in,” he maintained.
To another question, he said Karachi was a mini Pakistan with multi-lingual and ethnic population and the government was taking all the political parties and other stakeholders on board to ensure durable peace there.
The representative of Muslim Hands apprised the PM that they would provide 500 two-room houses to the flood victims in different parts of the country.Gilani also appreciated the efforts of the Muslim Hands and other NGOs working for relief and rehabilitation of the flood victims.

Pakistan takes eight steps to be more corrupt

October 27, 2010

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan goes down to 34th from previous 42nd rank in a global list of perceived corruption published on Tuesday by Transparency International (TI). “Corrupt practices have increased in the country,” the Berlin-based non-governmental organisation said.
Iraq and Afghanistan came near the top of the global list. “The results indicate a serious corruption problem,” it said. “Allowing corruption to continue is unacceptable; too many poor and vulnerable people continue to suffer its consequences around the world,” said TI’s president Huguette Labelle in a statement.
Iraq was fourth from top of the most corrupt ranking, Burma shared second place with Afghanistan and lawless Somalia was considered the world’s most corrupt country, with a score of 1.1.
At the other end of the scale, Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore were seen as the nations least blighted by corruption, scoring 9.3 points. They were followed by Finland, Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands.
Criticised for going the other way were the United States, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Madagascar and Niger.The United States was 22nd on the list, while Greece and Italy came in at 78th and 67th respectively. China was level with Greece. — INP
AFP adds from Berlin: Nearly three-quarters of the 178 countries in TI’s annual survey scored on the sleazier end of the scale, which ranges from zero (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 10 (thought to have little corruption).
“There should be nowhere to hide for the corrupt or their money,” Labelle said.The head of the group’s German section Edda Mueller said the overall international situation was “very worrying”.
She added that the percentage of countries below average was “a very bad signal for attempts to solve global problems.”“There are clear indications that the more unstable a country is, the higher the level of corruption,” Mueller told AFP.
She stressed the need for the international community to put credible governing structures in place in so-called “failed states.”“That is at least as important as billions in development aid,” she said.
Certain countries were singled out for an improvement in their fight against graft, notably Chile, Ecuador, Macedonia, Kuwait and Qatar. Mueller said that the performance of these countries should serve as hope and inspiration for countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq.
“There is still hope. We put in some countries that have improved their score precisely to show that there is the chance to improve and that it is possible.”The ranking is compiled from “a combination of polls, drawing on corruption-related data from expert and business surveys carried out by a variety of independent and reputable institutions,” the NGO said.
TI said corruption was hampering efforts to combat “the world’s most pressing problems” such as the financial crisis and climate change.The watchdog also noted that of the 36 countries that have signed the OECD’s anti-bribery convention forbidding greasing the palms of foreign officials, “as many as 20 show little or no enforcement of the rules.”
This sends “the wrong signal about their commitment to curb corrupt practices,” TI said. Meanwhile, a press release of the Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) stated that Pakistan’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) score is 2.3 against 2.4 in 2009, and out of 178 countries, its ranking as most corrupt country has slipped seven ranks, from 42 in 2009 to 34 most corrupt country in 2010.
Syed Adil Gilani, Chairman TIP, said in last two years there have been unprecedented cases of corruption involving tens of billions of rupees in public sector organisations, which under the rule of law, should have been taken up by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
He said the political will of the government to fight corruption is lacking which has resulted in the Supreme Court of Pakistan to take suo moto action against mega corruption in NICL, Pakistan Steel and rental power plants.
The CPI 2010 reveals that corruption in Pakistan is increasing, while in Bangladesh it is decreasing. Bangladesh was perceived to be the most corrupt country in 2001, 2002 and 2003 and its ranking in 2010 is 39 most corrupt country. Reduced corruption has paid dividends to Bangladesh whose annual GDP growth last year was over 5%, while Pakistan’s GDP growth last year was near 2.4%.
The TIP chairman observed that delay in formation of an independent accountability commission by the parliament may further aggravate the situation. He said that the SC, which has a declared policy of zero-tolerance for corruption on March 22, 2009, in its order of October 12 in NICL Case No18 of 2010 involving six procurements, considers the violation of Public Procurement Rules 2004 as a criminal act.
It is a landmark order, treating violation of Public Procurement Rules 2004 as a federal crime and it will help reduction in corruption. The direct impact of increased corruption is witnessed in the rise in the prices of food commodities which according to the latest official data of Federal Bureau of Statistics, have increased up to 120 percent in last one year viz. sugar from Rs54 to Rs80, pulses from Rs50 to Rs110, eggs from Rs35 to Rs60, and the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for the fiscal year 2009-2010 dropped to $2.21 billion from $3.71 billion in FY 2008-2009, and in July-Sept 2010 it is further dropped to $387.4 million (68% of last year). Foreign debt on Pakistan increased from $40 billion in 1999 to $46 billion in 2008, whereas in last two years it has increased to $53.5 billion.
The TIP observed that across the board application of rule of law, merit based appointments and easy access to justice is the only solution to save Pakistan from corruption, which is responsible for poverty, inflation, terrorism, illiteracy, lack of electricity and hording of essential food commodities.
On the other hand, India slipped four points from 91 last year to 91 in the world corruption rankings.The TI report says “perceptions about corruption in India have increased in the wake of the scam-tainted Commonwealth Games.”

Govt ignored its own plan to end corruption

By Ansar Abbasi
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s sharp downslide as one of the most corrupt nations in the world in 2010 is the consequence of Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani’s utter failure to implement a reforms programme prepared by his own government to check corruption and improve governance.Government sources said that the National Governance Plan, prepared by a high-level committee headed by the then Finance Minister Shaukat Tareen, remained untouched while there had also been no progress in the implementation of the restructuring programme of the eight corruption-hit and badly mismanaged loss making leading public sector enterprises by September 1.
Additionally, it is said that the promise of setting up of a new accountability commission still remains unfulfilled. The sources said that after the issuance of 2009 report of Transparency International, which showed Pakistan overtaking five most corrupt nations to become 42nd from the previous 47th most corrupt country in the world, the prime minister constituted some official committees to introduce reforms to check corruption and bad governance.
Interestingly, the reforms plan was prepared and submitted to the government but the prime minister did not implement any of the recommended reforms. As a consequence, both corruption and bad governance touched new heights in Pakistan.
On Tuesday, the Transparency International found Pakistan slipping from the 2009’s 42nd position to the present (2010) 34th most corrupt country in the world.In April-May this year, Shaukat Tareen, just before leaving the government, submitted to the prime minister a “National Governance Plan” that sought from Gilani to take some bold initiatives and undergo radical changes in the present day’s governance to improve governance and check corruption.
The National Governance Plan recommended an immediate cut in the size of the federal secretariat by reducing the number of federal ministries down to 30; giving protection of tenure to key bureaucrats and heads of government organisations; introducing of motorway policing model throughout the country; replacement of patwaris by revenue assistants to be appointed by the public service commissions; rationalisation (reduction) in the size of the Prime Minister’s Secretariat; working out a new code of working relationship between a minister and a secretary; pay to government servants on the basis of performance; revision of Government Lands Act 1912 for better and transparent allocation and utilisation of state land; filling of strategic positions through open competition; and computerisation of land revenue record, court cases, police record, property tax, etc. None of these reforms has been implemented as yet.
The plan also expected from the present government to fix the minimum tenure of service for secretaries of the cabinet, finance, interior, establishment, provincial chief secretaries and heads of police departments, and any other such position to three years. In case of all other federal secretaries, the term of the tenure, the plan recommended, be protected for two years.
Similar protection of tenure was recommended for provincial home secretaries, heads of police and other similar positions at the provincial level.The plan also proposed restructuring of the Establishment Division into a professional human resource department of the Government of Pakistan having special emphasis on career management and training of the government servants.
It recommended that pay for performance may be introduced with five performance criteria i.e. excellent, very good, good, average and below average. Bonus and rewards for excellent performers along with a punitive framework with regards to promotions may be devised.
Tareen’s National Governance Plan also recommended that Annual Confidential Report (ACR) of the government servants may be replaced with a redesigned open ended performance evaluation report in which goal and targets are set at the beginning of the tenure along with key performance indicators, which are tailored to reflect the scope of work and range of responsibilities relevant to each job.
The report sought restructuring of the key public sector institutions by appointing professional CEOs/head of organisations, whose appointment should be ratified by parliament. They should then be ring-fenced to act independently on financial and professional matters.
Government, it was proposed, should carry out restructuring of all public sector enterprises to improve service delivery, enhance transparency and avoid fiscal burden on the exchequer. However, nothing has been done as yet in this regard.
Restructuring of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has also been proposed and it was recommended that the FBR may be reformed with the aim of increasing the tax/GDP ratio, widening the tax base, simplifying tax laws, creating a transparent and easy to understand tax structure and fostering a culture of voluntary tax compliance through strategies to deter, detect and address non-compliance.
The report also sought strengthening of regulatory authorities by having reconstituted autonomous boards with appropriate private sector participation and an effective CEO, authorised to develop their own code of conduct and a strong management system.
Gilani had committed early this year to restructure Pakistan International Airlines Corporation, Pakistan Railways, Pakistan Steel Mills Corporation, Pakistan Electric Power Company Limited, Trading Corporation of Pakistan, Pakistan Agriculture Services and Storage Corporation, Utility Stores Corporation and the National Highway Authority, which instead of earning profits for the government are eating up hundreds of billions of rupees from the public exchequer because of massive corruption and mismanagement.
The prime minister had announced to restructure these public sector enterprises by changing their board of directors, appointment of new managing directors, CEOs and directors, approval of restructuring plans and starting of the implementation plans. September 1 was set as the deadline for this task but the Gilani government failed to do this and instead started plaguing organisations like OGDCL, State Life of Pakistan Corporation and others by making controversial appointments.

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Be shak, Main tery liye he jeeta hoon or tery liye he marta hoon.....!(Baba Fareed)
____________Punjab Police Zindabaad____________

Pakistan ranked 34th most corrupt country in 2010

Updated at: 1542 PST,
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
KARACHI: Pakistan's decline continue in Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and now its Index Score is 2.3 against 2.4 in 2009, and out of 178 countries, its ranking as most corrupt country has slipped 7 ranks, from 42 in 2009 to 34 most corrupt country in 2010.


Syed Adil Gilani, Chairman TI Pakistan said in last two year there have been unprecedented cases of corruption involving tens of billions of rupees in public sector organization, which under the Rule of Law, should have been taken up by the National Accountability Bureau.

He said the political will of the government to fight corruption is lacking which has resulted in the Supreme Court of Pakistan to take suo moto action against mega corruption in NICL, Pakistan Steel, Rental Power Plants.

The CPI 2010 reveals that corruption in Pakistan is increasing, while in Bangladesh it is decreasing. Bangladesh was perceived to be the most corrupt country in 2001, 2002 and 2003 and its ranking in 2010 is 39 most corrupt country.
Reduced corruption has paid dividends to Bangladesh whose annual GDP growth last year was over 5%, while Pakistan's GDP growth last year was near 2.4 %. Delay in formation of An Independent Accountability Commission by the parliament may further aggravate the situation.

Chairman TI Pakistan said that the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which has a declared policy of Zero-Tolerance for Corruption on 22 March 2009, in its order of 12th October, 2010 in NICL Case No.18 of 2010 involving six procurements is considers the Violation of Public Procurement Rules 2004 as a criminal act. It is a landmark order, treating violation of Public Procurement Rules 2004 as a federal crime and it will help reduction in Corruption.

The direct impact of increased corruption is witnessed in the rise in the prices of food commodities which according to the latest official data of Federal Bureau of Statistics, have increased up to 120 percent in last one year viz. sugar from Rs 54 to Rs 80, pulses from Rs 50 to Rs 110, eggs from Rs 35 to Rs 60, and the Foreign Direct Investment for the fiscal year 2009-2010 dropped to US $ 2.21 billion from US$ 3.71 billion in FY 2008-2009, and in July-Sept 2010 it is further dropped to US $ 387.4 million ( 68% of last year).

Foreign debt on Pakistan increased from US $ 40 Billion in 1999 to US $ 46 billion in 2008, whereas in last two years it has increased to US $ 53.5 billion.

Across the board Application of Rule of Law, Merit based appointments and easy Access to Justice is the only solution to save Pakistan from corruption, which is responsible for poverty, inflation, terrorism, illiteracy, lack of electricity and hording of essential food commodities.

In the 2010 CPI, Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore tie for first place with scores of 9.3. Unstable governments, often with a legacy of conflict, continue to dominate the bottom rungs of the CPI. Afghanistan and Myanmar share second to last place with a score of 1.4, with Somalia coming in last with a score of 1.1.

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Be shak, Main tery liye he jeeta hoon or tery liye he marta hoon.....!(Baba Fareed)
____________Punjab Police Zindabaad____________

End corruption in seven days, Malik tells govt dept

By Shakeel Anjum
ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said that heads of departments would be responsible for monitoring corruption in their departments. The minister visited the FIA Headquarters and met with heads of different key departments working under his ministry.
Malik said all heads of departments have been given a period of one week, till November 7, to take steps to eliminate corruption. The minister put great stress on the media to help the government eradicate corruption from the society, saying that he knew the scale of the menace.
Visiting the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) headquarters in Islamabad, the minister directed the agency to adopt a zero-tolerance policy regarding criminal activities, saying that the process of accountability will be started from the FIA.
The federal minister vowed to take strict steps against human traffickers and those in possession of illegal arms, adding the staff deployed at checkpoints from where people were illegally leaving the country would also be thoroughly checked. He pledged to end corruption in the same manner as terrorism was confronted.
He said that action would be taken against extortionists and a special helpline would be established in this regard. In order to ensure that injustice is done to none, a task force would be made in the Interior Ministry in which civil society and NGOs would also be represented.
He said that 5,000 job opportunities would be created in the FIA and announced that women’s quota had been raised to 25 per cent in the FIA. He further announced that employees’ salaries will now match those of the Motorway Police, Islamabad Police and Punjab Police and the FIA will be given more powers. He also said that housing societies would be established in big cities for the FIA employees.
Rejecting the Transparency International (TI) report, Rehman Malik said that whenever there was a crisis, the TI become active. Their aim is only to stop foreign aid to Pakistan. This happened at the time the quake hit Pakistan in 2005; at the time when Kerry Lugar Bill was being debated, again when floods hit Pakistan. The aim of the TI is to destabilise Pakistan and we will investigate the matter. The interior minister lauded the Supreme Court action against the loan defaulters. He said that the government would play a positive role in the recovery of loans.

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Be shak, Main tery liye he jeeta hoon or tery liye he marta hoon.....!(Baba Fareed)
____________Punjab Police Zindabaad____________

Corruption fallacies

By Shahab Usto
Sunday, 07 Nov, 2010

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.

Introduced by Gen Ziaul Haq, it requires would-be legislators, inter alia, to be “sagacious, righteous and non-profligate and honest, and ameen”. 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.

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 roti, kapra aur makan 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

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Be shak, Main tery liye he jeeta hoon or tery liye he marta hoon.....!(Baba Fareed)
____________Punjab Police Zindabaad____________

I am extremely sorry to say but reading this article corruption fallacies is a real torture and the main reason is not its topic. In fact the articulation is so artificial and it seems like the whole intent is to show the fluency of the language rather than focusing on the topic...

its fine that CSS requires this fluency in the language but do not complicate things unnecessarily because then it will not be able to grasp the intention of of the reader...

if someone wants to show the command on language then this kind of articulation may help them but be simple if u want to focus to the topic...

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....."O my Lord! Open for me my chest (grant me self-confidence, contentment, and boldness); "And loose the knot (the defect) from my tongue, (i.e. remove the incorrectness from my speech)"That they understand my speech; And ease my task for me."(surah 20, ayaah 28).
Aameen....

do not defame your country. do not follow these conspiracies. you people have joined anti pak block by accepting their wrong and intentionaly misguiding surveys.