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.
Welfare Society
The fundamental principles of Islam requires that the State looks after the welfare of its citizens, all of whom are equal before the law, there being supposedly no elite. Those fortunate are forbidden from ostentatious display of wealth. They are admonished to bend over backwards to remain identified with those less fortunate and to share their good fortune. All that is theory, in practice there is no system of welfare in Pakistan, mostly it is lip-service in the public sector, in the private sector there is evidence of it but it is sporadic. As much as democracy as practiced in Pakistan was a sham, so are welfare schemes. State-sponsored welfare schemes were present in the communist system but these fell prey to inefficiency and corruption. Our meagre forays in this field have faced the same misfortune.
Welfare Schemes have to cater for (1) those who have no means of earning a living and (2) the senior citizens of the State. The minimum common agenda (MCA) should be to provide them with the bare necessities of shelter, medical cover and enough money for food, payment of utility bills, etc. For those employed by the State there is a system of sorts. The Defence Services are closest to an optimum caring for those retired, the civil bureaucracy has a system in place but it is not adequate enough. For the private sector, schemes were instituted during late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s regime but they have been overtaken by rampant corruption and gross inefficiency, the Employees Social Security Institution (ESSI), managed separately by the Federal and respective Provincial Governments, and the Employees Old Age Benefit Institution (EOBI) managed by the Federal Government.
The Limits of Accountability?
Third World media has a reflex tendency to quietly bemoan its impotence as regards corruption within the bureaucracy. Unlike in the FIRST WORLD, the media’s enthusiasm to do investigative reporting is dampened by an administrative bag of tricks which would put Merlin the Magician to shame. Since the Government’s advertising releases translate into economic survival of the newspapers and magazines, the name of the game normally is that “fools rush in, where angels fear to tread.”