Economy and Accountability, the Inseparable Twins
On Thursday Jan 25, the military regime will have been in power, give or take a few hours, for a full 100 days. With the masses waiting with increasing impatience and cynicism for their “great expectations” to be fulfilled, some forward movement is discernible both in effecting accountability and in repairing the economy, enough not to write the khakis off just yet. The rumour machine, fed by motivated interests, has been working overtime. Gearing up for accountability has taken some time, not helped by the badly drafted Ordinance creating the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), a dozen or so holes appearing in it the moment it was unfolded for public view. As for economic revival, the measures enacted are in the right direction but the tap-dancing with respect to tough decision-making about GST, etc must come to an end. Cheap popularity comes with populist initiatives but that will hardly be the salvation of Pakistan economically. Sustainable long-term measures may be temporarily unpopular, that is the only way out of the black hole we are in presently mired in.
One cannot forsake public perception, for the sake of our present rulers NAB has to come good quickly. Given that investigation and prosecution of white-collar crime is not a piece of cake, NAB should have first gone for those easily nabbed. All politicians, who took part in the 1990, 1993 and 1997 elections, have had to declare their assets. The discrepancies/deficiencies between their declarations and income/wealth tax returns would be guilt enough to convict them for a period extending from 1-3 years, the conviction automatically disqualifying them for a period of not less than 10 years. Since the evidence is a matter of record, the process would hardly take more than 2-3 weeks. A more detailed scrutiny could then be done in a more elaborate fashion and acquisition of wealth beyond known means would then become a reason for further conviction, confiscation of illegally acquired property (with penalty thereof) and enhancement of the period of disqualification. This exercise would eliminate almost 60% of all politicians who took part in any of the last 3 elections, the first phase taking care of the impatient public desire for punitive action against those who they trusted in vain with their valuable votes to give them good governance.
The second object of collective public anger are those members of the bureaucracy who have not only enriched themselves at public expense but flout it with impunity. Again this exercise should be done in two phases; the first phase should reconcile their income/wealth tax returns with a declaration of assets presently held by them. A law enacted by the Quaid as far as back as 1947 makes any bureaucrats found living beyond their means guilty of misconduct, they should be asked to prove the difference between their known income/wealth as declared and expenditures. Failure to give convincing proof should be enough to incarcerate the person for a period of 1-3 years. Detailed scrutiny thereafter could ascertain as to how the person had acquired wealth beyond his known income. Necessarily this exercise must begin from the top, a gradual process of elimination filtering down to the lowest rung in the ladder of public employment.
As a first order of business the government went after loan defaulters. In the enthusiasm to show some results, a part of the exercise has become counter-productive. In the first instance draconian measures should only have been propagated for clear cases of “willful default”, of which there happen to be a fair number, and as well as those cases where the assets pledged are neither upto the required quantum or are clearly fraudulent in nature. This exercise gave an excuse for vested interest among defaulters (and those bankers who willfully engineered that default) to start a vicious adverse propaganda about the effect on business in the country. Unfortunately for them the rampaging stock market not only belies such apprehensions but also exposes them as false doomsday prophets. Our problem is not only those who evade taxes but rather evade documentation altogether. Instead of 1.5 million bearing the burden of 130 million, 3.5 million taxpayers would not only cut the deficit, we may even have a healthy surplus.
No one seems to be either addressing or giving importance to the making of false statements, more particularly the giving of false evidence. NAB will go nowhere until it mandates exemplary punishment for those who make false accusations and/or falsify their statements. Obviously such deliberate misleading is for personal gain or personal vendetta. White-collar crime by itself is not easy to pursue, with public servants and private citizens both confident that even if they perjure themselves no one is going to take action against them, investigations are unlikely to succeed. NAB should give the highest priority to perjury cases, making it impossible to tell lies, whether under oath or not. A good start point may be the awards given against the government or semi-government corporations in cases of arbitration or by the Federal/Provincial Ombudsman, don’t they prove the guilt of those in the corporations who gave false evidence under oath? It is very frustrating to see bureaucrats tell lies as a matter of routine and get away with it without punishment.
All the political governments outdid each other in appointing corrupt and/or inefficient persons without adequate knowledge or experience to key organisations, 100 days into military rule some of these outright rascals are still occupying these posts. This gives very wrong signals to the electorate, almost as if the whole object of the reactive coup was personal, that only the known loyalists of the previous regime had to be changed, for the rest it is business as usual. Those who change their loyalties first are usually the front-line activists. It is dangerous to allow such persons to have access to positions of influence or be in a position to influence the masses. Unfortunately our patronage system continues to hold sway even with the present impartial referees in charge, this anomaly has still to be dealt with.
The economy will remain under pressure of extraneous influences committed to lining their own pockets at the expense of the nation unless the bite of accountability is felt. Three of the national commercialised banks (NCBs) have been turned around and the credit goes to those expatriate bankers who returned from abroad to serve their country at personal financial cost to themselves, what a great irony that those same bankers who had brought these commercial institutions to ruin are now conspiring and propagating against those who have rescued these entities from total collapse. Such people want to reverse history so that they can get their grubby hands back on the banks tills. Again NAB has to take a move on, they must prosecute those who bring false accusations to bear on the honest and the efficient.
With the rains coming in time and in just enough volume to give us hope of a bumper wheat crop, with the share index reacting in like manner, there seems to be enough fuel in the economy to give us hope. Which brings us to the need for adequate storage for our agricultural products. It is no secret that because cotton has not been lifted sufficiently, there is risk of cotton bales being damaged, rice stocks are under similar pressure. Storage godowns do exist but logistics planning has been inadequate. As a country heavily reliant on agriculture, we must ensure that the magnificent efforts of our farmers in the fields do not go to waste.
For a nation beset with horrendous political, social and economic problems, 100 days do not constitute enough period to pass judgements on the rulers, there has not been sufficient time to effect real change. The problem is that while the rule of law is being enforced, the application of the law has been uneven. Like Junejo’s Suzuki-isation of the bureaucracy, the ban on marriage feasts was welcomed by the general public and recently re-enforced by Presidential diktat. That is not the case in real life, this ban is being violated at will, in 5-star hotels in utter disregard and with barely camouflaged measures. Since many of those whose job it is to enforce the law attend these functions, the public perception is that a different law is on the statute books for the poor, in practice this does not apply for the rich and influential. This symbolizes our dilemma, the differing standards we have for the majority as opposed to that of a very miniscule minority. When rulers in power ensure that everyone is equal before the law, accountability will begin to positively affect the economy.
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