- Corruption and democracy
There is a feel-good factor to Pakistan’s one point rise in Transparency International Index’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) from last year, even though the overall ranking has stayed the same because other countries have moved up and down as well. So we stand, still, at 117 among 180 countries. Hardly worth celebrating, but rising a notch in real terms and maintaining the overall raking means, at least, that we have not got any worse. And, surely, the way PTI’s so-called anti-corruption drive is gaining momentum, you won’t find many pessimists in the ruling party about next year’s standing.
Yet before PTI can take any credit for the improvement, however negligible, they should also take a look at the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2018, which registered Pakistan as losing two places to last year. They would not look too good claiming the credit for the first one, and dumping the failure of democracy on the previous regime, as in all other things. That the report considers Pakistan’s government a hybrid regime, ranking it just above authoritarian Myanmar, is not very flattering either. And much of the problem seemingly lies with the way PTI rose to power; the transparency of the election and all the maneuvering that allegedly went into it.
And, sadly, you won’t find many optimists even within PTI about the democracy rating of next year. Parliament, after all, is in a logjam precisely because of PTI’s own priorities. It’s obsession with corruption is fair enough, but labeling senior opposition leaders corrupt to the core – without due process – has embittered almost all other parties in the House and made legislation impossible for the time being. Unfortunately, this state of affairs owes primarily to the egotistic behaviour of one man – the prime minister. It took a lot of convincing, apparently, from his senior ministers for him to relent to the PAC chairmanship handover to Shahbaz Sharif. But that’s where things have stood since then. The prime minister is reminded that he made all those tall promises about transparent, democratic rule and that his government hasn’t quite lived up to them yet.
