The corruption dilemma

On the line of Netflix’s ‘The Social Dilemma’, there seems to be a great opportunity for some gifted filmmaker to make a documentary on Pakistan’s corruption dilemma. You have all the right ingredients here to create high drama, suspense and mystery. After all, there have been certified references to The Godfather and the Sicilian mafia.

At the same time, the proposed documentary would have room for some dark comedy, if you bear in mind some characters who must figure in this story. It has to be a tragicomedy. And like the Netflix feature, the documentary on Pakistan’s corruption, and the accountability process it has spawned, could have some scripted segments. A documentary-drama hybrid.

A great excitement will be in its casting. Naturally, the central character in this presentation would be Prime Minister Imran Khan. You couldn’t wish for more dashing a hero. What is not sure, though, is whether he would emerge as a fearless warrior who slays the monster of corruption or a Hamletian figure who loses his way in a labyrinth of u-turns.

Would it conclude that Imran Khan had been tilting at the windmills of corruption, not being able to bring back the billions, in dollars, that corrupt Pakistani politicians had stashed away in foreign accounts? But there is no confusion about the targets he has identified. He is particularly obsessed about the Sharif family, while not letting the Zardari-Bhutto clan out of sight.

An interesting twist in the tale is that politicians in the second lead, who are electable in their constituencies are often rewarded for their corrupt past when they choose the winning side before a national election. This column has no space to name names. I am not sure but a betrayal of this kind – and its magnitude – may be unique to Pakistan’s politics.

As for mystery, there would be some confusion about who actually is directing this entire action and how the choice of the principle antagonists in any specific campaign is made. On the face of it, all corrupt countries in the developing world would be alike. But Pakistan is different because of its history of military interventions and an imbalance in the relative power of national institutions.

Obviously, when they talk about corruption they are only looking at it in a monetary context. The focus is entirely on politicians in high authority who are seen to have abused power for their own gain. There is no concern for moral, intellectual or constitutional corruption. Besides, Pakistan’s experience of an accountability process is that it is always selective. Observations made in the Supreme Court can be quoted in this regard. That is why its exploration would underline some critical issues about the country’s national sense of direction and the validity of its system of governance.

While the PTI government of Imran Khan is fixated on corruption since its inception, to the exclusion of many other challenges that Pakistan faces, this is particularly the time when this issue is legitimately in the forefront of the media and political discourse. In the wake of the Broadsheet scandal, the new rankings of Transparency International have cast a shadow on PTI’s narrative.

Now, Transparency International compiles its annual ranking of what it has defined as the Corruption Perception Index (CPI), based on specific surveys and interviews with the experts. So, when it was revealed on Thursday that Pakistan has lost four points on the ranking, placed on 124 out of 180 countries, the spokespersons of the government rushed to dispel any impression that corruption in the public sector had increased during the tenure of this government.

But that is what the message is. Almost instinctively, it was argued that the present perception of Transparency International was founded on old data and the performance of the previous governments. This is the standard, knee-jerk reaction of the PTI leaders when something grossly goes wrong.

For example, when there was a power outage in the national grid three weeks ago, Omar Ayub, the federal minister for energy, blamed the previous governments. Irrespective of what had happened, Omar Ayub was himself associated with the previous two regimes, this being his third incarnation in power. And he is in the company of many colleagues.

In any case, the PTI ministers and spokespersons are striving to put a spin on Pakistan’s CPI ranking, unwilling to tone down their broadside at the opposition on the subject of corruption. However, the opposition has gained some advantage at a time when the PDM momentum has perceptively declined.

Coming back to the mysteries and the mystification that surround the saga of corruption in Pakistan, we have the Broadsheet scandal that covers the entire spectrum of the accountability process. Its details will easily provide the necessary material for a political thriller. It begins with the birth of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) during the military rule of Pervez Musharraf and, thanks to some inordinate circumstances, its reverberations are still relevant. That is why a judicious probe into this scam is so important.

Yes, the government has appointed an inquiry commission to be led by retired Justice Azmat Saeed Sheikh and has finalised its terms of reference. But there are some problems with this one-man commission that the PTI leadership is refusing to acknowledge. The PML-N has alleged that the former judge of the Supreme Court was part of a conspiracy against the party’s government.

In a statement, Pakistan Bar Council Vice-Chairman Khushdil Khan and Supreme Court Bar Association President Abdul Latif Afridi have expressed reservations about the appointment of the retired justice as head of the Broadsheet inquiry commission since he was a member of the Supreme Court bench hearing the Panama case against Nawaz Sharif and had previously held the office of NAB Deputy Prosecutor General at the time of the Broadsheet agreement in 2000.

We cannot be sure about what it will lead to. What seems certain is that the political environment will remain polluted with conflicting narratives on the accountability process at the cost of many other grievous problems. This is a part of a game plan we are not aware of?

The writer is a senior journalist.

Email: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com