Corruption in democracy

The common understanding is that most opinion polls or surveys are either unrepresentative or biased. When they are not, their findings could be reflecting more of a passing sentiment than durable public thinking about governments, persons or propositions.

But still there are surveys which seem to endorse the views generally expressed in the mass media, in elite circles and bazaars or in the cabals of dissidents. That can be said about Transparency International’s most recent survey on corruption in Pakistan. While the findings of the survey that corruption had grown four-fold over three years (2006-09) can be disputed, one would be hard put to deny that, in the public perception, the country’s civilian governments have been more corrupt than the military and, further, that the political nazim’s administration has been more corrupt than that of the bureaucratic deputy commissioner.

The higher incidence of corruption in civilian governments doesn’t necessarily imply that their heads, ministers or legislators were also corrupt or connived at corruption. But surely they were all eager to reward their own men for the privations they suffered in the campaigns launched to dislodge military rulers.

When Benazir Bhutto swept into power in 1988 along came a horde of youth claiming jobs, plots and other favours for standing by her side during her long years in jail and in the political wilderness. Whatever their contribution to her victory in elections and before that the sacrifices they had made to try and save her father from the gallows, their expectations were unreasonable and could not be met by remaining within the bounds of law and propriety.

As chief secretary of her government in Sindh then, I recall a second-rung woman leader of her party turning up to demand a plot in expensive Clifton, not being content with one in a lesser area. An absconding district engineer demanded to be made chief engineer as the price for his loyalty. A junior finance official aspired to head the country’s biggest bank. All that was argued, but she could never bring herself round to tell a youth who had set himself on fire for her sake that she couldn’t give him the job he wanted. Every request, every approach made to her was for a favour, not equity.

Courtiers and cronies laid siege to every other political leader before and after Benazir Bhutto. The military commanders did not, nor would they easily succumb. The governors of Sindh in Ziaul Haq’s regime with whom this writer was called upon to work as home secretary and in other capacities had no debts to pay or sacrifices to recognise. Gen Mohammad Iqbal Khan would routinely ignore or defy any suggestion coming from the rapidly-politicising chief martial law administrator that was improper. Gen Abbasi was a stickler for the rules. In my five years with them I hardly ever felt compelled to act against the law or propriety.

The governors in Gen Yahya Khan’s regime — Admiral Ahsan, Air Marshal Nur Khan, Gen Atiqur Rehman and Gen Rahman Gul — were austere men of integrity who followed the rule of law, sought no favours nor dispensed any. While they must not escape their share of responsibility for the disaster that then overtook the country, if ever the administration was free of corruption and pomp in public life it was then. It hasn’t been since — no matter whether the government has been a civilian or military one.

The comparison of corruption in districts under nazims and the deputy commissioners proceeds on similar lines as those under political and military governments. The nazim is the nominee of a political party. The deputy commissioner is a career civil servant. The nazim is accountable to his party boss, the deputy commissioner to an official hierarchy. The DC does come under political pressure but the nazim is himself a politician.

Gen Musharraf’s expectations that the nazims would be non-political, loyal to him alone and ultimately form the backbone of his own party were not fulfilled. Every nazim used his power and the funds he received from the centre to advance the interest of his own party leader and not that of Musharraf. That is, however, not to deny any development that took place under the nazims to the benefit of the community at large. But, as they say, the other side of the coin of development is corruption. The nazims indeed used their power and money unchecked by any public agency or auditors.

The deputy commissioner, on the other hand, works under surveillance and has a choice to take another job if he cannot remain neutral — a choice not available to the nazim. It would, however, be undemocratic and inadvisable to wind up the local councils only because the nazims cannot be neutral or equitable. The ministers and legislators are against the district governments not because of their maladministration but because they are losing their foothold in their own constituencies. Politics, as is well known, is local and sustained by jobs and not by making laws.

Leaving aside the question of corruption being more or less under the nazims or deputy commissioners, the objectives of community participation and neutral administration can both be met if development in the districts is entrusted to the nazims and regulatory functions to the deputy commissioners as coordinating heads of the provincial government. At any rate, the present system in which all functions vest in the nazim is not working.

The nazim of Karachi was heard complaining on television the other day that he could not prevent encroachments in Gutter Baghicha because the police wouldn’t come to his help. Surely, he knows that both under the local government and police laws he is responsible for law and order and the chief of the district police is also answerable to him.

Deputy commissioners had no better control over the police under the colonial laws than the nazim now has in Musharraf’s system. No deputy commissioner, however, could ever disown responsibility for encroachments. This writer was deputy commissioner of Karachi 40 years ago for four years. Those were not the best of times for the administration and Gutter Baghicha even then was a favourite target of professional encroachers. But they were able to nibble at the edges and no more. Losing 400 acres to them in four years signifies total lawlessness or connivance — neither should be tolerated.