Afghan President Hamid Karzai (L) shakes hands with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari at the presidential palace in Kabul.— Photo from Reuters/File

SO, the famed prosthodontic smile emerged from its plush Islamabad dugout and took itself off to corruption-ridden Afghanistan last Thursday, where in Kabul it mingled and met with the world’s brightest foreign secretaries, and the Aga Khan.

Our besieged president travelled to that dangerous city presumably at the behest of the US State Department in a tit-for-tat gesture politely acknowledging Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s presence (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ‘unworthy ally’) at his own swearing-in ceremony when the two Afpak head honchos sat side by side.

As Asif Zardari braved Kabul, back in his own homeland his freed-by-his-predecessor media was concentrating on the corruption scenario presented under his government. The fact that Transparency International has downgraded Pakistan in the ranks of the world’s corrupt countries is not as damaging as the perception of corruption that permeates the ranks of his country’s citizens and of those citizens of the world who seek safe investment havens.

Excuses have been made in the press by certain commentators that though corruption impedes growth and economic development, in the initial stages of nation-building and economic take-off eliminating corruption could cause greater stagnation. Our power sector has been cited as one example. A convoluted explanation is that we now suffer from a power deficit because in the 1990s, during the second Benazir Bhutto government, we scrapped too many IPP deals on corruption charges. We would have been better off, it is mooted, with available electricity even if it came with tainted deals.

Amongst others, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are cited as examples of countries that have had highly corrupt take-offs, followed by clean-ups and structured accountability. China is massively corrupt, but is flourishing economically as is Thailand, and India has taken off to some extent and must now clean up corruption. This defence does not wash in our case. Corruption has eaten into the vitals of this country to the extent that it lies crippled. It is nowhere near take-off point.

Another excuse made by this government’s feeble defenders is that it is unable to tackle the many problems that beset the people as it is under constant attack over corruption charges. This again does not wash. Corruption there has to be, in all countries democratic or otherwise, as that is the nature of man. But corruption must be limited, it must not be allowed to impede growth, governance and negate law and order.

A ‘competent’ government can be forgiven to a certain extent for controlled corruption as long as it delivers and gives to the country what it is supposed to give in return for having been voted in. Our governments apart from not delivering rob to the hilt, plunging us downwards with nary a care as most of their members have no stake in this country.

Some of us might be willing to put up with a certain amount of corruption were we satisfied that the taxes we are paying are being put to our use and benefit and not simply being delivered into a bottomless cavern into which plunge the fingers of the non-tax-paying politicians who have a free run of the country and its assets.

The most hideous example of corruption has been the NRO, bequeathed to us by a blend of past president, Pervez Musharraf, and the USA. This expedient bit of legislation has stripped the country of thousands of millions (or is it billions?) of needed rupees. It ends its life on the auspicious occasion of the national cattle cull, November 28. Can any amounts be recovered, we must ask our government and our courts, or are they lost and gone forever? The list of the beneficiaries is awesome.

Corruption takes many forms — moral corruption is as rampant as is the material corruption we live with, and moral corruption with its hypocrisy and bigotry is as highly insidious, eating not into the national exchequer and the country’s assets but into the national mindset. Corruption, material and moral, also kills.

Material corruption in this city of Karachi, the largest of the land, has been responsible this year alone for the death of 266 so-called political activists of the main political parties that make up the deplorable Sindh government, all of whom it can safely be said were involved in scams mostly concerning the grabbing of land or the division of spoils extorted from the public.

Corruption and venality have almost put paid to the environment of this country, from the stripped hills of the northern areas, down through the NWFP and the hills of Murree, over the plains of the Punjab, swirling into barren Sindh and debased Karachi. Our cities are amongst the most polluted and most environmentally degraded in the world, merely because our governments and administrations are adept at making money by ensuring that measures to prevent pollution and degradation are never undertaken.

On the moral corruption front, we have the blasphemy laws, an open invitation to the amoral to settle scores or to misappropriate properties with the greatest of ease. The Hudood ordinances are an equally open invitation to those who believe that women are expendable — in the cabinet of 80-odd, in itself a form of corruption, we have two sitting ministers who subscribe to this view.

Again and always, back to the Founder-Maker of this country which has staggered along for 62 years under unbelievably inept and corrupt leaderships. Three days prior to its birth, Mr Jinnah called corruption and its attendant bribery ‘one of the biggest curses’ afflicting the subcontinent and firmly told his future legislators that ‘it must be put down with an iron hand.’ The opposite happened. The flabby fist ensured that corruption flourished.

arfc@cyber.net.pk