Corruption culture
Entrenched in the system, corruption is widespread
By Aoun Sahi
On September 19, Chief Minister of Sindh, Arbab Ghulam Rahim while talking to officials of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in Karachi requested institutions fighting against corruption in the province to "do something to reduce the rate of corruption in different government departments." The chief minister said that in fact his efforts at blocking corruption within the body politic have led to many unkind words and actions against him. With such an admission from a chief minister, who needs Transparency International to judge just how corrupt Pakistan is?

Caught nabbing
When the government is blamed for promoting what it had come to eradicate opposition politicians feel vindicated. The focus is on the much-criticised National Accountability Bureau
By Ashraf Malkham
Military coups in Pakistan-- from Ayub Khan's to Pervez Musharraf's -- have been justified on the premise that political governments they overthrew were corrupt. The army came to power with a promise to root out corruption from the country which was the main cause for the country's backwardness and for the concentration of the exchequer's money into the pockets of a few individuals.

The real revelations about corruptions are reserved for books. The disclosures so proudly made in newspapers can at best help create a perception that can then lead to the ouster of a government or two. But that thought is farthest from our mind as we come up with this Special Report based on the latest findings of the Transparency International. For one, we find ourselves disinclined to believe such surveys having seen that given a chance, the 'respondents' come up with an entirely contrasting statement at the hustings. Also we will be doing the country a great disservice by bracketing a government which has done so much for us with the corrupt setups of the past, however compelling the evidence.

As balanced editorial writings go the above paragraph should put across our point sufficiently. A qualification however would be in order. We have by and large confined ourselves here to financial corruption that seems to have a bigger impact on people generally and sadly than any other type of corruption -- like the corruption of a constitution. The reference to the chief law of the land does creep in though when an opposition politician calls for accountability of all under a judge who has not taken oath under a provisional order. Yet it is not serious dry talk all through and we have by way of relief a town nazim who says he will not take action against a poor low-ranking officer who has to take bribe to make ends meet, following close behind a chief minister who has been heard pleading for lowering the bribe rates, with a most senior member of the ruling team being reported as taking things of stock. With or without an international report, it was never more transparent domestically.

When Ghulam Ishaq Khan used his presidential powers to sack Benazir Bhutto's government merely 20 months after she was first sworn in as prime minister, he cited corruption as the main reason for his act. Almost 16 years since then, and a countless number of chargesheets and court cases later, her party, more or less, still retains its popular appeal.

In the latest general elections, held under the watchful eye of an administration which makes no effort to hide its anti-Benazir bias, her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) gained 25.8 per cent of the popular vote. Contrary to what the government of Pervez Musharraf had expected, this was an improvement on the percentage of total votes it polled in the 1997 general election. The party which had then polled only 21.8 per cent of the votes and had managed just 18 seats in the National Assembly in 1997, got a much bigger share of the popular vote in 2002. In fact, it had polled 0.1 per cent more votes than Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam), though the difference between their National Assembly was much larger and surprisingly in the favour of the latter.

The waxing and waning political fortunes of Benazir Bhutto and her party is a clear indicator that it is something other than corruption which makes voters pick or reject a party in general elections. If PPP's corruption had been as big an issue as to warrant the sacking of its government in 1991, the party would not have received 36.9 per cent of total votes -- only 1.6 per cent less than what it had polled in its historic 1988 victory. PPP increased its share of popular vote to 37.9 per cent in the 1993 elections despite the fact that it had faced sustained charges of and investigation into its alleged massive graft all through the preceding two years of rule by the rival Pakistan Muslim League led by Mian Nawaz Sharif.

It's in Nawaz Sharif's case that the role of corruption as a factor in the electoral failure of a party becomes all the more questionable. When he rode to victory in 1997 garnering a massive 45.9 per cent of the popular vote, he had just seen off a three-year long campaign to investigate his personal and business finances. The campaign started when Zahid Sarfraz, a minister in the interim administration of Moeen Qureshi, would daily appear on the national television to harangue about the alleged misdeeds of Nawaz Sharif and his family's business house. The PPP government that followed Moeen Qureshi did not buck the trend for obvious reasons, though nothing came about before it was asked to pack up -- again citing corruption charges -- in 1996.

Another political actor illustrates the point even more forcefully. Imran Khan, and his Tehrik-e-Insaaf, made headlines in the mid-1990s by making corruption as their poll plank. That he has never managed to win more than one seat in the National Assembly since then shows people are not willing so far to let someone form a government with the sole purpose of cleaning up the acts of previous governments. So much for the desire exhibited by ambitious armymen and other seekers of power to justify their takeovers by maligning politicians as being incorrigibly corrupt.

This still begs the question: should we allow corruption to thrive unchecked only because the voters have not seen enough of democratically-elected governments to make a positive or negative opinion about their corruptibility? Of course not, because the consequences of inaction are immense. A posting on the website of the Transparency International (TI), an independent international watchdog which ranks countries according to the level of corruption prevailing in them, illustrates how the quality of life deteriorates under corrupt public administrations. The effects "of a corrupt system of governance are graphically shown by a family trapped for generations in poverty because a corrupt and autocratic leadership has systematically siphoned off a nation's riches."

An even more graphic, and a real life, instance happened in Pakistan and only less than a year ago. "At least 17,000 children died in school collapses," according to a report by the Christian Science Monitor, when a devastating earthquake hit parts of Pakistan's northern territories. Almost 500 students died in a single school in Balakot town, the paper reported. "Some 8,000 schools collapsed in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), and 2,000 in Pakistan's less-populous Kashmir region. All the schools collapsed in Muzaffarabad, the capital of (Azad) Kashmir," it added. It was mainly because of these universal school collapses in the earthquake-hit areas of the country that "the United Nations Children's Fund estimates that children account for about half the 80,000 killed in the quake." The newspaper quotes experts as saying that "systemic corruption in government construction projects is directly responsible for the devastating losses."

So far nothing has come out of the official vows to investigate the shabby construction of government schools. And nothing will, the official, unofficial and foreign attention being too much focused on rescue, relief and rehabilitation to allow little time for probes that could have held someone responsible for the collapsed schools and consequent loss of life.

The story in the meanwhile has moved from the damage corruption caused during the earthquake to the likelihood of misappropriation of funds meant for the reconstruction of earthquake zone. Everyone involved, except for the government, has raised serious concerns about the possibility of this taking place unless a comprehensive system of checks and balances in created to ward it off. The foreign donors, local civil society activists and non-government organisations working in the quake-hit areas have already pointed out cases of serious mishandling of reconstruction money, prompting President Pervez Musharraf to offer personal guarantees to ensure every single penny went to the deserving. Available evidence, though, suggests otherwise.

While discussing how corruption affects communities and societies, the Transparency International refers to "post-disaster donations provided by compassionate people, directly or through their governments, that never reach the victims, callously diverted instead into the bank accounts of criminals... (and) the faulty buildings, built to lower safety standards because a bribe passed under the table in the construction process that collapse in an earthquake or hurricane." The observation is based on TI's working in almost 90 countries worldwide during the last two decades and can be proved wrong through either luck or a combination of honesty and competency among the people entrusted with the task of reconstruction and not just at the top level.

Daniel Kaufmann, the director of global programmes at the World Bank Institute, writes in a paper entitled 'Back to Basics -- 10 Myths About Governance and Corruption' that the coming together of the factors for the success of reconstruction effort is least likely to happen if the rest of the government machinery remains as clogged by corruption as always. He says it's a myth that donors "can 'ringfence' projects in highly corrupt countries and sectors... the notion that the aid community can insulate projects from an overall corrupt environment in a country is not borne out by the evidence. The data suggests that when a systemic approach to governance, civil liberties, rule of law, and control of corruption is absent, the likelihood of an aid-funded project being successful is greatly reduced." How the authorities will be able to stop this from taking place in Pakistan, one of the most corrupt nations under the sun according to the latest TI rankings, should not be difficult to tell.

It's with this focus on the improvement of governance in general that the donors are helping the government to launch infinite number of initiatives to cleanse the working of the public administration. These include economic, financial, corporate and tax system reforms, reforms in the justice and legal system, civil bureaucracy reforms, restructuring and strengthening of anti-corruption agencies, devolution of power to ensure local monitoring of public expenditure, creation of public safety commissions and police complaint authorities and promulgation of laws to guarantee freedom of speech and access to information. The range of these programmes is mindboggling and so is the amount of money being spent on them, which in most cases is being extended as loans repayable by future generations. As far as their outcomes are concerned, it may serve well to refer to the TI's latest report about Pakistan which says in no uncertain terms that corruption has increased instead of decreasing in the wake of the comprehensive reform programmes mentioned above.

The reasons for the failure are obvious. All reform initiatives lack public participation and popular scrutiny through the people's watchful representatives. These are driven by the donors' agenda, not by a popular home-grown movement. In such a situation, they are reduced to the voluntary projects aimed at reforming the very people whose interest lies in maintaining the status quo.

To make a less corrupt Pakistan a reality, corruption needs to become an electoral issue. But that can happen only when we have an election in which political players are not fighting on a ticket for the restoration of a democracy. After people have the right to choose their rulers, it's highly likely that they will choose the right ones sooner rather than later.

Long graft to a definition

Asking what constitutes corruption in a country like Pakistan is bound to elicit interesting response. They may range from corruption being inevitable to acceptable to anathema, depending on who is being asked and about whom. If it concerns crime and land records, then it may be inevitable; if it involves traffic violations then it may be acceptable and if it involves commission and kickbacks then it not just makes big news and provides the grist of television talk mills -- it's also considered a national crime and plundering of public money.

But corruption watchers don't make these fine distinctions. Corruption is corruption if it involves "the misuse by government officials of their governmental powers for illegitimate, usually secret, private enrichment," according to Wikipedia, the Internet-based encyclopaedia. It may take many forms which include "bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, graft, kickbacks and embezzlement." The encyclopaedia then moves on to elaborate how these forms are different from each other and what are they meant for. "Bribes may be demanded in order for an official to do something he is already paid to do. They may also be demanded in order to bypass laws and regulations... In some countries the culture of corruption extends to every aspect of public life, making it extremely difficult to stay in business without resorting to bribes... While bribery includes an intent to influence or be influenced by another for personal gain, which is often difficult to prove, graft only requires that the official gains something of value, not part of his official pay, when doing his work. Large 'gifts' qualify as graft... Another example of graft is a politician using his knowledge of zoning to purchase land which he knows is planned for development, before this is publicly known, and then selling it at a significant profit... While bribes may be demanded in order to do something, payment may also be demanded by corrupt officials who otherwise threaten to make illegitimate use of state force in order to inflict harm. This is similar to extortion by organized crime groups... Patronage refers to favoring supporters, for example with government employment... Favoring relatives (nepotism) or personal friends (cronyism) ... may be combined with bribery, for example demanding that a business should employ a relative of an official controlling regulations affecting the business... Embezzlement is outright theft of entrusted funds... (and) a kickback is an official's share of misappropriated funds that belong to his or her organization. For instance, suppose that a politician is in charge of choosing how to spend some public funds. He can give a contract to a company that isn't the best bidder, or pay them more than they deserve. In this case, the company benefits, and in exchange for betraying the public, the official receives a kickback, a portion of the sum the company stole."

Though these definitions clearly state that anything that accrues a government official a personal benefit at the expense of public good and/or national exchequer is corruption, there is no way to quantify how much does it cost to a society or an economy. "Measuring corruption -- in the statistical sense -- is naturally not a straight-forward matter, since the participants are generally not forthcoming about it," reads the encyclopaedia.

An article entitled 'Measuring Corruption: Myths and realities' and co-authored by World Bank Institute's Director of Global Programs, Daniel Kaufmann, says corruption can be measured by "gathering the informed views of relevant stakeholders. These include surveys of firms, public officials, and individuals, as well as views of outside observers in NGOs, multilateral donors, the private sector and experts in investment rating agencies and think tanks... by tracking countries' institutional features. This provides information that can be related to opportunities or incentives for corruption, such as procurement practices, budget transparency. These do not measure actual corruption, but can provide useful indications of the possibility of corruption... by careful audits of specific projects. These can be purely financial audits, or more detailed comparisons of spending with the physical output of projects."

Based on these formulas, some anti-corruption watchdogs have come up with various indictors and indices to gauge the intensive and extensive nature of corruption in a country. According to Wikipedia, "Transparency International, the leading anti-corruption NGO, provides three measures, updated annually: a Corruption Perceptions Index (based on experts' opinions of how corrupt different countries are); a Global Corruption Barometer (based on a survey of general public attitudes toward and experience of corruption); and a Bribe Payers Survey, looking at the willingness of foreign firms to pay bribes. The World Bank collects a range of data on corruption, including a set of Governance Indicators."

In Pakistan, these organisations' findings and surveys have led to a categorisation of various public sector organisations and services in order of the level of corruption found among them.

"...expert sources indicate that the following sectors are among those most affected by corruption (the particular order varies from source to source):

Police and law enforcement

Judiciary and legal profession

Power sector

Tax and customs

Health and education

Land administration

In addition, Public Procurement seems to be a major concern across most sectors," says an article by U4-Utstein Anti-Corruption Resource Centre.

But this categorisation misses one important point. It does not take into account private corruption -- that is corrupt practices prevalent among corporate sector and other sections of society like NGOs, media and even doctors. The combined effect of corruption in all fields of life may be much greater than the measurement of official corruption may suggest. It may also help understand why a society accepts to be ruled by a corrupt administration, even if that corruption is eating into the very roots of a polity or economy.

In a country like Pakistan where black economy -- fostered by money earned through corruption and wheeling and dealing facilitated by corrupt officials -- is as large as the white one, it seems corruption is the very lifeline for millions of families. No wonder it is acceptable, even inevitable, even when it keeps creating banner headlines over a long period of time.

-- By Muhammad Badar Alam

index

In an obvious damage control exercise, the Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) is taking pains to clarify that its National Corruption Perception Survey 2006 does not find the Pervez Musharraf government to be more corrupt than the governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

The attempt at rectification came after a Transparency International survey said that 32.69 per cent of the respondents cried 'corrupt' when they were asked to give their verdict on the Prevez Musharraf government during 1999-2001. The percentage went up to a whooping 67.31 per cent when the same question was put as regard to Musharraf's 2002-2006 rule.

34 per cent respondents said the Nawaz Sharif government in 1997-1999 was more corrupt than Sharif's previous rule in 1990-93 that was found corrupt by only 10 per cent. Only 8 per cent labelled Benazir Bhutto's first government as corrupt as compared to 48 per cent who found her second government as corrupt. But the attempt at damage-control aside, the percentage of the people who found both 'tenures' of the Pervez Musharraf government corrupt was higher as compared to Benazir or Nawaz.

The contentious question put to 4,000 respondents in the four provinces of the country was: 'In Pakistan which government was/is the most corrupt; and what about the present government?' Syed Adil Gillani, chairman Transparency International Pakistan tells TNS the question was framed to compare the two 'tenures' of the same ruler, and not to match stints of one ruler with those of another. In Musharraf's case, of a total 4,000 respondents 32.69 said his first tenure was corrupt and 67.31 per cent put the same tag on his second.

Gillani recalls that in a 2002 Transparency survey of 3,000 respondents, the Benazir and Nawaz governments were considered corrupt by 48.70 per cent and 43.03 per cent respectively. Musharraf's government was considered corrupt by only 3.17 per cent; Ziaul Haq's by 1.53 per cent and Ayub Khan's by 2.17 per cent. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto emerged as the least corrupt and cleanest of all Pakistani rulers with 1.4 per cent.

Isn't Transparency International being soft on the present government, with whose National Accountability Bureau (NAB) it is working? Adil responds by saying that Transparency International's agenda is to work with the government to bring in reform. "Look at NAB now. It is more reform-oriented under Transparency International's guidelines," he says.

He said Transparency International should be given credit for introducing a uniform procurement policy, as previously there existed around 28 different systems of procurement awhich was causing widespread corruption.

As to why didn't Transparency International Pakistan work with previous Pakistani rulers -- say in 1996, when it dubbed the Benazir Bhutto regime as one of the most corrupt in the world -- Gillani says back then the TIP did not follow the code of conduct of Transparency International that makes it a mandatory neutral setup which does not take names or take sides. The then TI Pakistan chapter was dismantled and only revived in 2001.

Adil Gillani also explains this survey would not be part of international corruption perception index that rates the countries' corruption perception levels for the investors. The Berlin-based Transparency International says its index is not an assessment of the corruption level in any country -- rather it is an attempt to assess the level at which corruption is perceived by people working for multinational firms and institutions as impacting the commercial and social life. If a country has an issue with its ranking, this lies not with the index but rather with the perception that businessmen polled apparently have of that country. Their perceptions may not always be a fair reflection on the state of affairs, but they are a reality.

Transparency International has certainly taken its time clarifying its position; that its findings should not be interpreted to be against a government. It did not say so during Benazir's time for instance, although in its 1997 report it recognised: "The impact of the index was perhaps greatest in Pakistan. The anger of people in Pakistan over their government's participation in rampant corruption was catalysed by Pakistan's position as second-worst in the world table. Suddenly, this anger became focussed, accompanied by the bitter feeling that Pakistan had 'deserved better' from their political elite. The reaction to the index in Pakistan was remarkable: Embassy and opposition party representatives visited TI in Berlin to ask for clarification. Many Pakistanis contacted TI which promoted the creation of a network in Pakistan and made TI a household name."

And that was not the only time the index had ignited shock waves in the country -- not the only time where the perception may have contributed in the ouster of a (political) government.

The Musharraf government also used Corruption Perception Index to pillory the previous regimes or using it as a touchstone to measure his government's anti-corruption campaigns. National Accountability Bureau's annual report describes the Nawaz-Benazir era marked by "prevalence of rampant, pervasive, institutionalised and endemic corruption in Pakistan. Moral values, societal norms and religious ethos were set aside and wealth accumulation became the primary objective. Five successive governments were dismissed in this period on charges of corruption without completing their tenure.... "

Later NAB again quoted that Transparency International had declared Pakistan as the second most corrupt nations out of 58 surveyed in 1996 and that "As per a general estimate, in past years almost 20% of the GDP has been lost through corruption and corrupt practices annually."

Not surprisingly, NAB has not commented on the latest Transparency report.

In the opinion of the 4,000 respondents quoted in the Transparency survey the three most corrupt government departments in Pakistan are police (64 per cent) power (11 per cent) and judiciary (9 per cent). In 2002, the police were of course ranked first followed by power and then taxation.

In response to the query 'In your opinion which Province is the most corrupt?' The respondents of each Province considered their own province as the most corrupt except NWFP, where Punjab was rated as most corrupt of the four provinces.

The report concludes that in spite of the best efforts of the government the corruption menace appears to be still at large. Bad governance of all the ten departments (covered in the survey), combined with the public ignorance, impatience attitude & seeking shortcut solution of the consumers has aggravated situation.

Corruption culture

On September 19, Chief Minister of Sindh, Arbab Ghulam Rahim while talking to officials of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in Karachi requested institutions fighting against corruption in the province to "do something to reduce the rate of corruption in different government departments." The chief minister said that in fact his efforts at blocking corruption within the body politic have led to many unkind words and actions against him. With such an admission from a chief minister, who needs Transparency International to judge just how corrupt Pakistan is?

Jam Madad Ali, Chairman Public Accounts Committee Sindh Assembly tells TNS it is fact that if one denies giving officials bribes for even one's legal work they use delaying tactics and force the person to make a 'deal' with them. "Arbab Ghulam Rahim's statement shows how bad the situation in the country is. We should ponder on the issue; who is responsible for this situation? We are the only ones who can make the situation better," he says.

District Nazim Muzaffargarh, Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan Jatoi publicly announced on September 27 that he will not dismiss any public servant on corruption charges. The reason he gives TNS is very interesting "I do not think the 'poor' public servants who are involved in corruption of Rs 5,000-Rs 10,000 should be punished in a country where even the rulers are involved in corruption of billions of rupees.

Jatoi says everybody knows who has arned billions of rupees through the stock market scam. "Has any action been taken against him?"

Other senior officials are not only involved in corruption but also encourage corrupt elements. "One is doing corruption to earn his bread and butter while other is doing it for enhancing his bank balance. So who will be punished?" he questions. Qayyum Jatoi thinks that corruption cannot be eradicated from Pakistan as it has become an integral part of our culture. "All top hierarchy in Pakistan is corrupt, so how can they stop it?" he says.

The agencies meant to curb corruption in government functionaries and in society also seem helpless. "Corruption is now very much accepted in our society," says Brigadier (retd.) Muhammad Aslam Ghuman, director, Anti-Corruption Establishment, Punjab. He thinks neither the government nor the society are serious about eradicating this menace. "I always ask people to come to us whenever they are pressed for a bribe, but 99 per cent of people come to us after they have bribed officials and have not got the results they wanted. They say they had bribed officials 'because there is no other way'" Aslam Ghuman tells TNS.

According to him one of the main reasons for corruption in government functionaries is that most public servants are poorly compensated. "Many of them compensate themselves by taking bribes, and most of the time they go unchecked. This also drives others to follow in their footsteps to make their living better. Unfortunately the number of public servants who have taken this route has increased manifold in recent years," adds Ghuman.

National Perception Survey 2006 of Transparency International Pakistan reveals that 90.21 per cent people (they questioned in different parts of Pakistan) who interacted with police faced corruption. In judiciary the situation is slightly better, 77.52 per cent people faced corruption. In health department 67.17 per cent people faced corruption, while in land administration department 91.97 per cent people faced corruption. The situation in all other departments is similar according to the survey.

Social scientists think corruption has sunk deep roots in Pakistani society, and there are reasons for this. Professor Dr Muhammad Hafeez, head of Department of Sociology, University of Punjab, Lahore says, "when a wife gives her husband examples of other people who are better off, saying he is prospering and you are not, she is encouraging him towards corruption." He says many forms of corruption are sanctioned and encouraged by our culture. "Our society as a whole does not encourage honesty. You can easily find hundreds of honest public servants living miserably, being called fools. Even government does nothing for those 'poor' officers and most of time they work as OSD and for them being transferred from one place to other is regular phenomenon. People in Pakistan do not even like honest politicians and always vote for those who, according to them, are able to solve their problems, whether by using legal or illegal means," Hafeez tells TNS.

He also thinks that the expansion of the government has brought the state very close to a large number of people. "But the increase in the size of the government has meant an increase in the power of the civil service, which has been used within weak and continuously deteriorating legal and judicial systems. Without much fear of accountability, civil servants collect heavy bribes from the citizens they are meant to help." To change the general acceptance of corrupt practices, Dr Hafeez thinks a concerted long-term effort is required to educate the people, starting with school children.

Chaudhary Ghulam Abbas, senior vice president PPPP Punjab chapter and the only anti-corruption minister in Punjab ever, thinks financial corruption is being promoted deliberately in society. "The constitution violators, who practice the worst form of dishonesty, intentionally encourage the corrupt elements in all institutions to veil their corruption. President Pervez Musharraf has confessed that he weakened the political powers in country and shaped a new political party to achieve his aims. What is this?"

Ghulam Abbas tells TNS that when he was minister Anti-Corruption Punjab, the person who had the biggest problem with him was the then chief minister Punjab. "Corruption culture prevails in our society from top to bottom. Patwaris, police or any other department are just puppets and work as front-men, while the original culprits are those in power. These days even patwaris are being appointed directly from chief minister house, so how can you combat corruption in a society like this?" adds Ghulam Abbas.

Syed Adil Gillani, Chairman Transparency International Pakistan says that there is no question that all governments in Pakistan were corrupt; you can only grade them in the order of one being more corrupt than the other. "Same is the situation in government functionaries, every department is corrupt," he says.

The situation seems very grim. What can be done to bring honesty back into dealings between the citizens and the functionaries of the state? Adil Gillani thinks the problem will not be resolved through agencies like NAB or anti-corruption departments. "Just change the system of exemptions and there will be no direct contact between public and public servants for official work. All official work should be done through letters as is done in NADRA. The results are in front of you. Now even if the president of Pakistan wants to get ID card or passport he will have to visit them once, and the rest of the work is done through mail."

Military coups in Pakistan-- from Ayub Khan's to Pervez Musharraf's -- have been justified on the premise that political governments they overthrew were corrupt. The army came to power with a promise to root out corruption from the country which was the main cause for the country's backwardness and for the concentration of the exchequer's money into the pockets of a few individuals.

After taking over from Nawaz Sharif in 1999, General Musharraf established the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). The institution was and continues to be headed by a serving Lt.General. NAB arrested a number of political leaders irrespective of their party affiliations and this first step was appreciated by the general public. But doubts crept in when the army and judiciary were declared to be out of the ambit of this institution. The businessmen got a reprieve to ensure that economic activity wasn't scuttled. Slowly, only politicians and bureaucracy survived as candidates fit for a place in the accountability bureau's hall of shame.

Politicians from certain parties and some bureaucrats were arrested by NAB and even while good amount was recovered from them, NAB fast lost its credibility because it had come to be regarded as a tool for selective accountability. Figures in Transparency International's recently-released report are something NAB could have done without, for it must have fared very badly for corruption to have increased in the country (See Transparent just got clarified).

NAB started off with operations against senior politicians and bureaucrats but the general perception today is that now it is confined to arresting patwaris, sub-engineers and head clerks. The News on Sunday contacted opposition leaders to know their point of view about the role of NAB and the justification for its continuous existence. Not surprisingly, most of them declared it to be a body used by the regime to harass opposition legislators.

Chaudhry Nisar Ali of Pakistan Muslim League-N terms NAB as a useless body in a talk with TNS. He says NAB's role as an anti-corruption and accountability body was exposed long ago and asks as to how can anyone talk of NAB as a genuine accountability authority when it has been unable to investigate two recent scandals concerning the people: the hike in the prices of sugar and petroleum. Chaudhry Nisar says the people of this country have been robbed off Rs 200 billion by marketing companies.

"NAB could only justify its existence had it been able to hold people accountable above party affiliations. How can NAB even pretend to go after the corrupt elements when these elements are sitting on the government benches in the national as well as provincial assemblies, indeed in the prime minister's cabinet?," the PML-N leader says. "NAB's continued existence is a joke on the people of Pakistan."

Awami National Party Chief Asfandyar Wali expresses the same sentiment when he says "NAB's only duty has been to deliver members of parliament to the government and that "there are two classes (of politicians); one consists of Nabzaddas -- those who are languishing in jail and the other comprises Nabzadaas -- those who are occupying minister's colonies at the provincial as well as federal level."

Asfandyar says that after NAB's silence on Pakistan Steel Mills case, it can hardly be considered as an accountability institution. For him it represents a continuation of the Ehtesab Bureau of the Nawaz Sharif days.

Pakistan People's Party-Parliamentarian leader Qamaruzzaman Kaira says NAB has recovered money from bank defaulters, while banks could already get their money back through courts of law. "What the NAB has done is that it has got commissions on these recoveries," he says, quickly reiterating the view that those in the official camp have been spared the NAB's advances.

"Those who changed their loyalty were given ministries in federal and provincial governments while no action was taken against powerful people who were involved in sugar and cement scandals," he says.

Kaira is all for accountability and for an accountability body working under the supervision of judges. Correction, a body that is headed by judges not sworn in under a provisional constitutional order.