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Pakistan’s most popular politician, ex-P.M. Imran Khan, has consistently highlighted the problem of corruption in the country, citing it as his reason for wanting to dislodge rival politicians accused of malfeasance from power. Last year he had made much of the Pandora Papers—an investigation into the shadowy offshore financial system that highlighted global corruption—and vowed to investigate over 700 named in them before the news cycle moved on. His current popularity is understandable since the man in the street is aware of the alleged corruption after years of propaganda and wants it removed, preferably by someone carrying worry-beads while haranguing the crowds.
Unfortunately, today’s Pakistani mind is by and large concentrated on worship and not on ethics that are focused on right and wrong; not according to religion, but on the basis of the criminal code of the country. Not that Islam doesn’t teach ethics: the Quran tells us of a “nation of Prophet Shuaib” that was destroyed by Allah because “it did not measure honestly” in the marketplace. Ironically, Europe got its ethics from religion, Protestantism, which was a revolt against the “corruption” of Roman Catholicism under a Pope. Fortunately we have our National Accountability Bureau (NAB) devoted to cleansing Pakistan of the malady. Unfortunately, most of it happens through our politicians or rulers who replace politicians after a coup.
Is it the civilian politicians who indulge in corruption or the frequent non-democratic phases that overtake the country often on the plea of removal of corruption? Actually when you cut out the representative system—or democracy to put it plainly—the world detects significant cutback in corruption. During the early days of the Musharraf regime there was subsidence in the occurrence of graft because his government was still to expand to get him the “legitimacy” he wanted as a ruler. Also, more projects get off the ground during military dictators who usually last a decade before being engulfed by the same disease. After patterns of corruption get repeated, the people start complaining about it. Their encounter with graft takes place with departments that deal with them: the police, the judiciary, the income tax bureaucracy, customs, land records, etc.
The most embarrassing irony is that Pakistan has had to take apart the very institution it had set up to end corruption: the cleverly initialed NAB had become a tool of political engineering, with allegations of an allegedly corrupt chief acting on the directions of the incumbent rulers after being filmed doing things that a conservative Pakistan can’t stomach. After the abuses that happened under NAB, the world should get together and plead with Pakistan: please don’t do anything about corruption because your anti-corruption measures are worse than the crime. Just to recall, PMLN-appointed NAB chairman Saifur Rehman had actually gone down on his knees and begged forgiveness for having victimized the PPP leadership. In those days, cases of money-laundering running in foreign courts were also inconclusive because of the shadow of illegitimacy of the process inside Pakistan. Imran Khan’s challenge to both PMLN and PPP on their properties abroad reveals more about this hidden corruption. If Khan’s religion is the answer, we have had that many times with no result.