For a country where corruption is institutionalized and where seventy thousand containers loaded with weapons and other contraband goods go missing and where kidnapping for ransom or extortion has become an industry patronized by political parties in power, the tabling of a toothless Accountability Bill in NA does not bode well for future of this country. It is a bill which offers many loopholes for the corrupt to evade punishment and promotes a culture of rampant pilferage of tax payer’s money and plunder of state and private property.
Nations like America flourish and have become super powers, because of rule of law, where men like Madoff, in spite of being billionaires rot in jail, while in Pakistan, those who fleeced the poor and widows in Co-Operatives scam, or those involved in land mafia scams like DHA Valley, or responsible for crippling power shortages, are either part of ruling elite or assume role of kingmakers. Pakistan and its economy have been strangulated by the few corrupt within ruling political elite, or in paid civil and khaki bureaucracy. Yet the government and its coalition partners have the audacity to table an impotent Accountability Bill, which time bars serious crimes of conspiracy to deprive the state and tax payers of funds that should have been utilized to develop our human resources, improve infrastructure to save lives lost in floods, and an efficient law enforcement system to protect lives and properties of its citizens.
Pakistan suffers because of poor governance by men in power and instruments of the state involved in weak prosecution of heinous crimes against the people, including institutionalized plunder of its scarce resources by men holding dual nationalities. We live in a country which calls itself an Islamic State, yet where all citizens are not equal before the law. In the civilized developed world those holding public office are judged on a stricter code of ethics and morality than applicable to common citizens, while those who hold public office in Pakistan consider themselves above the law. How can a state call itself Islamic which allows robber barons to get away Scott-free just because of passage of time and where innocent citizens are butchered in target killings and nobody gets prosecuted because of connivance of politicized law enforcement agencies and public prosecutors.
MALIK TARIQ ALI
USA
