Pakistan today suffers because corrupt elite have ganged up together, holding state sovereignty hostage, eroding its economy and making mockery of laws in existence. This dishonesty started in 1948 with fake allotments of evacuee property, followed by Ayub’s policy of allotting state lands to salaried civil cum khaki bureaucracy and now has assumed dangerous proportions where irregularity of multiple plot allotments has been regularised. Dishonesty and corruption are crimes while incompetence is a deficiency. If elected civil government and military dictators at helm were incompetent, then this should have reflected upon their personal assets, which expanded astronomically.
When state enterprises alone are driven to bankruptcy and tax evasion goes unpunished, while billions of dollars are transferred to foreign safe havens, then this daylight robbery has been going on endlessly by design. Mere exposing these crimes in media serves no purpose, unless those named are given exemplary punishments, instead of conveniently giving them clearance through plea bargain, which only serves in promoting corruption.
When Musharraf government ignored targeted murder of over 300 police officers for the sake of political exigencies, the stage was set for terrorists to challenge the authority of state. Lives of over fifty thousand citizens of Pakistan, including our men in uniform and over 150 children massacred by terrorists in APS Peshawar could have been spared and over $50 billion that our economy has suffered prevented. The NRO given to criminals involved in heinous crimes of murder, rape, kidnapping and robbing state has reduced this country to a banana republic.
State assets like PSM, PIA, CAA, OGDC, NICL, etc were reduced to white elephants by governments headed by men addicted to corruption. State land and private property has been looted and charges of corruption are no longer a stigma but assumed status of qualification. How else can any government, including present, justify appointing individuals who have been accused of grave financial and social crimes? It is not lack of qualified citizens with integrity, but the fact that they would not serve greed of those who wield power.
ALI MALIK T
Lahore
