Stock Market and Yupsters
The dollar took another beating on the world currency markets as a direct result of the US trade figures for February which showed the deficit increase by over US$ 1.4 billion, reversing the trend of the past few months. The US dollar promptly bounced back buoyed by the positive trade figures for March. At the moment it is going both ways. The earlier downturn triggered a sympathetic fall in the Dow Jones Index, the gnomes on Wall Street bringing it down a sharp 100 points or so. On the other hand, the Geneva Accord on Afghanistan fetched nary a blush and served as a significant example of the prevailing perceptions of various forces to paper agreements that (1) the Russians are using the Accord as a mere propaganda ploy as a backdrop of the Reagan-Gorbachev Summit in Moscow in May 1988, having no real intention to go back and (2) the world of paper currency is increasingly getting divorced from happenings that are not real to them. There was a time when an honest to goodness “happening” on the international scene would act as a stimulant pushing share prices in either direction but the frenetic pace of panic selling/speculative buying is now linked to the vagaries of Corporate behaviour, Superpowers and Multi-nationals included. Having had their bits and chips snipped to the extent of trading within a span of 50 points up or down, computers are programmed to go into a limbo thereafter, while the market adjusts itself to real time. This fail-safe mechanism is meant to avoid a Wall Street meltdown a la Chernobyl, which almost happened on Black Monday last October when programmed computers set off a chain reaction almost leading to economic apocalypse.
The resultant crash of some market leader brokerage houses (and their merger with others to avoid liquidation) also saw a large number of employee lay-offs, affecting a whole generation of YUPPIES (Young, upwardly mobile persons) for economic reasons and they in turn unloaded on the market their status symbol BMWs and Porsches to cater for the ensuing loss of employment and their six-figure incomes. Market forces decide the real-politik of economic parameters that a person lives in the First World, unlike the Third World which has its own set of rules. A recent issue of NEWSWEEK talks about the emergence of YUPPIES among the rank and file of gangsters engaged in organised crime in the US of A. The particular brand of YUPPIES are called YUPSTERS and is a befitting name for their Pakistani counterparts in bureaucracy who regularly skim millions from public coffers.
The ultimate YUPSTER is alive and well and living in Pakistan and refuses to fade away into the twilight, being the only person in history to shamelessly turn up at the office regularly for some time after retirement, misusing the official telephone, car, POL as much as he did during his official capacity. True to his salt, he immediately filibustered the orders of the former PM and did not shed himself of his beloved BMW in 1987. The strict instructions of the former Prime Minister notwithstanding, the status symbol BMW was retained for use for one year till the YUPSTER retired. This is an example of how easy it is for the corrupt among the bureaucrats to frustrate orders, with the worst of intentions manifest in the deliberate violation. A BMW car is a treasured status symbol in the western world — a prized possession, valued by an affluent society much beyond its cost — and it is very costly too. In the Pakistani bureaucratic ex-world of Honda Accords and Toyota Corollas, a BMW stands-out in comparison like a US Presidential Cadillac, the purchase and use of it in a Third World country like Pakistan, an expression of utter contempt by an individual for the system — and this despite the former PM’s firm directive. This anachronism is not surprising given the inherent aptitude and capability of the vested bureaucrat for administrative manipulations and intrigues extraordinary. Over three decades of sustained criminal intent have gone into the career planning of such black sheep and they have given an honest and efficient civil service an extremely bad name, very much as a rotten fish sullies the whole pond. Such men will not shun from changing their sect even, if only to avoid paying Zakat, their only faith being the worship of money.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the former National Assembly had diligently gone through voluminous records to catch examples of corruption and malfeasance. In certain areas they were led by their noses to smell the cases that they were meant to catch. The first thing that a RASCAL does when he takes over a public Corporation is to make sure that he staffs the Internal Audit Section with his own people, even if he has to go outside the Corporation to get the necessary staff. This is his “A TEAM” and they get pampered by being nominated for foreign tours and courses even though those courses may not have anything to do with their vocation. The control of audit has a two-fold utility in that (1) the RASCAL’S actions do not fall within the ambit of any wrong doings i.e. he has a clean bill of health from internal audit and (2) he has the capacity to target enquiries in any direction to get his “enemies” into trouble or create various “red herrings” for investigating officers to follow. For the audit teams it has been easy to feed as much wrong information to the members of the Public Accounts Committee (or PAC-MEN for short) as they hastened to the kill, heedless to the fact that they were being deliberately led away (and astray) from the main scent to the cases of malfeasance contrived by vested interests to suit their purposes. PAC is not to be blamed but they should have invariably sought expert advice from businessmen in various fields before they undertook the detailed survey of any department or individual. This would have given them a multi-dimensional image of the situation. Since the President has been speaking about accountability why not start with conducting a public enquiry about the YUPSTER who hung onto the BMW till retirement? It is believed that some charges had been made after a detailed enquiry by the former PM’s Inspection Commission (PMIC). A comprehensive public investigation would serve as an example and would cover a wide range of suspected malfeasance pertaining to personal and professional perquisites including that of illegal enhancement of house rent (and taking 2 years advance thereof), non-payment of taxes on house rent taken, misuse of public vehicles, extra servants, blatant misuse of telephones, personal entertainment at public expense, travel, assiduously making false allegations, influencing of subordinates to create false evidence against his detractors, waste of public money because of personal dislikes and even the changing of one’s sect to avoid payment of Zakat etc. The tragedy is that an example can be made but the YUPSTER will wriggle his way out of trouble depending upon the pity and sympathy that he will be able to generate given the fact that he is blatantly dual-faced and has excellent connections.
Accountability starts with making exceptional examples of individuals in positions of authority. The President is not alone in demanding that corrupt officials and/or politicians be brought to justice, the whole nation demands the same. At this point of time, given the tenuous state of democracy, there is reason to fear that errant bureaucracy may attempt the “three birds with one shot ploy” i.e. guide the President’s hands away from the bureaucracy towards the politicians while simultaneously blaming the President, through the time-honoured method of a whispered campaign accusing him of vindictiveness against politicians with ulterior motives, topping all this with goading the politicians to resist the accountability by all means thereby creating sufficient grounds for instability which would compel the President to put all his eggs in the basket of bureaucracy. There is enough time to deal with corrupt politicians, some of whom will not survive the electoral process, the present need is to direct enquiries against the corrupt among the bureaucracy, the higher the better. For our honest and hard-working bureaucrats (and there is a vast silent majority of them) it would mean a welcome clean bill of health as well as isolating the YUPSTERS among them. The President should take cognizance of the fact that we are not noted for worshipping the setting sun as has been the case in the exit of poor Mr. Junejo and for his place in history he must ensure accountability with complete lack of bias or vindictiveness; the bureaucracy is as good a place to start as any.
The utter frustration in our system is manifest in our congratulating ourselves for creating “Katchi Abadis”. Living only a few yards from our affluent society which feeds and nourishes itself mostly on black money, our poor people occupy awesome ghettos in utter hunger, filth and disease. Most of us conveniently forget that this disparity has been a creation of the accumulation of black money contrived mainly from bureaucratic corruption. It is not difficult to create “Pucca Abadis”, it is only a question of coming to terms with one’s conscience and ruthlessly rooting out corruption. Who says it can’t be done?
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