Corruption Argument Must Not Derail Political and Social Rights

By Husain Haqqani

The Nation (Pakistan), Gulf News March 16, 2005

After almost two decades of describing corruption as the reason for most of the third world’s problems, intellectuals in the west are beginning to question the wisdom of that argument. In a significant article in the Washington Post, Moises Naim wrote, "Today the war on corruption is undermining democracy, helping the wrong leaders get elected and distracting societies from facing urgent problems." Mr. Naim, who is the editor of Foreign Policy argued that the obsession with eliminating corruption "crowds out the debate on other crucial problems."

According to Naim, "Corruption has too easily become the universal diagnosis for a nation's ills. If we could only curtail the culture of graft and greed, we are told, many other intractable problems would easily be solved. But although it is true that corruption can be crippling, putting an end to the bribes, kickbacks, and payoffs will not necessarily solve any of the deeper problems that afflict societies. In fact, this false belief can make it harder, if not impossible, to rally public support for other indispensable public efforts."

Naim points out that flaws in a country's educational system or healthcare and stagnating economies do not receive the same attention as corruption scandals. "These problems may be aggravated by corruption, but they are created by conditions that often have little to do with the behavior of dishonest government officials. Even when such social ills rise to the top of the national agenda, the fight against corruption tends to inform the public debate. Inevitably, the public's understanding of what it would take to tackle other national priorities becomes clouded by the corruption obsession."

The "worst collateral damage" of a fixation with corruption, according to Naim, "is the political instability it can create. Electorates already have many reasons to be disappointed with their elected officials. The corruption curse feeds people's unrealistic expectations about what it would take to improve their standard of living and set a country on a more prosperous path. Popular impatience, exacerbated by the belief that nearly all those at the top are lining their pockets, unreasonably shortens the time governments have to produce results."

Although Naim, who was born in Venezuela and once served as its Trade Minister, cites the example of Latin America where 11 governments fell because of corruption his arguments apply equally to Pakistan. Between 1988 and 1999 no elected civilian government was allowed to complete its term because of alleged corruption. The 1999 military coup that brought General Pervez Musharraf to power was also justified on grounds that Pakistan’s generals were better suited to wage the war against corruption.

As Moises Naim points out, "There is no doubt that corruption is a scourge. But there is also no doubt that many countries crippled by corruption are not sinking. Hungary, Italy and Poland are just a few examples of countries where prosperity has coexisted with significant levels of corruption. China, India and Thailand are not only not sinking; they are prospering, despite widespread corruption." Of course, Naim’s purpose is not to condone corruption. He seeks only to point out that the elites and intelligentsias of some countries can ignore more fundamental problems while obsessing about corruption. Often, deviation from constitutional governance and frequent ouster of elected leaders still does not bring corruption to an end.

During the mid-1990s Pakistanis felt dishonored by the revelation that Transparency International had listed Pakistan as the second most corrupt country in the world. Apologists for Pakistan’s establishment used this factoid to run down Pakistan’s politicians and blamed them for bringing Pakistan to this point. Once the establishment had run the politicians down and used corruption as an excuse for increasing its power in a succession of palace coups, discussion over Pakistan’s rating for corruption by Transparency International has seldom made news. Hardly anyone has noticed, for example, that Pakistan’s rating for perceived corruption increased in 2004 over the 2003 rating. Had elected civilians been in office, the intelligence services would have ensured headlines highlighting the increase in corruption.

Transparency International is a Berlin-based organization that publishes an annual Corruption Perceptions Index based on surveys "from 13 independent institutions" based on "the opinions of business people and country analysts." In the 2004 Transparency International index, Finland was identified as the world's least corrupt country and the most corrupt countries were Bangladesh and Haiti. According to TI, "The index defines corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain, and measures the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among a country's public officials and politicians."

The scores on TI’s index range from 10 (squeaky clean) to zero (highly corrupt). TI considers a score of 5.0 as "the borderline figure distinguishing countries that do and do not have a serious corruption problem."

Pakistan’s rating in the 2003 survey was 2.5 and in 2004 it stood at 2.1. Pakistan was tied in 6th position as the most corrupt country in 2004 whereas it was in 11th position in 2003. The methodology for determining the level of corruption in a country is such that the ranking is less important than the rating. A country can be the worst in a certain year, when fewer nations are surveyed, but move up or down in the rankings because of changes in the number of countries surveyed. Pakistan’s rating, on the other hand, has improved little over the years.

In Pakistan’s case, corruption is a constant factor, which is exaggerated or downplayed according to the political needs of the country’s bureaucracy and generals. The Pakistani establishment uses corruption as an excuse to boot out or denigrate the politicians while covering up the corruption and other ethical lapses of military officers and civil servants. Look at the difference in attitude towards the Transparency International surveys from the 1990s to the present. Had Pakistan’s corruption rating gone up under a political government, we would never have heard the end of how corrupt Pakistan’s politicians are.

During the last few weeks stories have emerged of a military officer’s involvement in rape, a Federal Secretary being detained at Heathrow for sexual harassment and two Pakistani police officers serving as UN Peacekeepers in Haiti running a prostitution racket. Not long ago the Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations, a career Foreign Service officer, stood accused by New York police of domestic violence against a girl friend.

In case of the military officer accused of rape, the military’s spirit de corps required the army chief to declare him innocent before a judicial process. The Federal Secretary is under suspension but will most likely bounce back. The ambassador was provided the cover of diplomatic immunity long enough to make up with the woman in question and the matter was buried without even a slight blemish on his record for bad judgment. The story of the police officers who used their position as UN peacekeepers to make money as organizers of prostitution has hardly been told in Pakistan. If any of these cases had involved popular politicians, Pakistan’s anti-political establishment and its apologists would have used them to argue that the country’s political class has no ethics.

Honest Pakistanis must carry on their struggle against corruption but anti-corruption crusades have been used by the country’s establishment to deprive the country of democratic governance and popular participation in government. As Naim points out, the obsession with corruption is diverting attention from and preventing debate on many other issues that Pakistanis must address.