Fighting corruption

If history is any guide, short cuts are not helpful in fighting corruption. From Gen Ayub Khan’s ABDO to Gen Pervez Musharraf’s NAB, each burst of accountability has been followed by a greater plunder of public money and assets.
Gen Pervez Musharraf’s initial zeal for anti-corruption measures floundered just a year after he assumed power. Ironically, the man who had taken the reins of government with a vow to hold the corrupt accountable himself became their saviour by promulgating an amnesty law, the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO).
A rip-off at the Bank of Punjab in which loans worth at least Rs9 billion were issued on fake collaterals is a relic from the Musharraf days. The alleged dubious lease of the railways lands in Lahore, which caused a loss of several billion rupees to the national exchequer, also took place in that period. In both cases, the high and mighty successfully dodged accountability.
The fact is that a majority of the entire ruling elite belonging to all organs of the state is mired in corruption though some may be less dishonest than others. These people are well-connected and have sympathy for each other. They help those who get caught either by hushing up the corruption case or tampering with the evidence or making the judicial process linger on so that the issue gets erased from public memory.
One hardly remembers scams involving writing off of loans worth billions of rupees by state-owned banks and billions of rupees ripped off by the cooperative corporations of Punjab during the 1980s and 1990s. The list is quite long.
It seems unlikely that most of the so-called mega cases of corruption in the media glare these days will stand the test of judicial scrutiny. Time and again, we have seen notoriously corrupt people getting a clean chit from the courts mostly because of insufficient evidence or defective investigations.
Bringing the corrupt to justice can be made possible only through institutions that have full independent authority, resources and capacity to probe a case, gather adequate evidence against the accused and get them convicted by the courts.
The civilian and military governments have never allowed anti-graft institutions to work independently and autonomously. Nor have these institutions been allowed to develop their professional capacity; this has made them dependent on other government departments such as the police, army etc from where they draw their investigating and supervisory staff.
Each ruler appoints his protégé as the chairperson of the accountability organisation, who sees to it that only those graft cases are probed that suit the ruler while others are swept under the rug.
Before the formation of NAB in 1999, the government used to select their faithful, malleable officers to head the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), which was responsible for anti-corruption probes. At the provincial level, anti-corruption establishments have been made puppets in the hands of chief ministers.
There is need to amend the constitution for making all the investigation agencies including NAB, FIA and provincial anti-corruption establishments autonomous with fixed tenures for their chiefs and other high-ranking officers. Legislation is also required to bind the courts to adjudicate a corruption case in a given period of time after the submission of a charge-sheet.
A major issue is the collusion of corrupt politicians and civil servants, which has led to unprecedented loot of public resources as can be seen in the scams recently surfacing in Sindh. This unholy bond needs to be broken by providing legal and constitutional guarantees to civil servants so that upright officers do not suffer when they turn down illegal demands from political bosses.
Successive civilian governments have made laws making the civil service subservient to the dictates of political bosses. If an honest officer declines to obey illegal orders, political executives insult and sideline him. The political culture has encouraged the corrupt and pliable among civil servants. A law providing protection to whistle-blowers can also be helpful.
As politicians give most of their unlawful orders verbally through phone or in informal meetings, a law should require that proper logs be maintained of all the meetings (be they informal) and the phones in use by public officials including ministers and officers.
A civil servant issuing an unlawful order or illegal action should be held solely responsible for such acts if s/he does not put in writing the reference of a verbal direction from the top so that pliable and corrupt officers cannot absolve themselves of their responsibility.
The office of the auditor general needs to be strengthened, vesting it with more powers to keep a tight check on civil and military bureaucracy. The conviction of corrupt civil and military officers will lend credibility to the anti-corruption drive and win wider public support for the accountability process.
The wealthy should be made to account for their possessions. The accountability law needs to be amended to place the burden of proof on a suspect to justify his assets.
Since corruption is so widespread that the capacity of investigation and prosecution is limited, this could be a more practical approach to impeach a large number of bureaucrats and politicians who became multi-billionaires by misusing official authority during the last few decades.
A large part of illegal money has gone into buying real estate and bearer prize bonds. All these transactions need to be documented and taxed. It should be made mandatory on the relevant authorities and housing societies to submit a copy of land transfer to both the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and NAB.
In order to weaken the grip of the corrupt on the power structure, a constitutional amendment is needed to the effect that those people who hold bank accounts and assets in foreign countries, in their name or in the name of their spouses and children, shall not hold any public office in this country.
Brief spells of high-profile, anti-corruption measures, such as the ones we are seeing these days, have always proved to be short-lived. Accountability is a continuing process, requiring long-term measures including strong legal guarantees and institutional mechanisms accompanied by a vigilant civil society.
Email: adnanadilzaidi@gmail.com