AS Prime Minister Imran Khan declared at Davos that his Government was the most transparent, Transparency International (TI) released its global report on 2019 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) showing that Pakistan’s ranking has slipped to five-year low of 120 out of 180 nations. The index ranks countries “by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys.”
Scoring 32 on the CPI in 2019, Pakistan not only fell one point below the 2018 score of 33 but also dropped three stages in the world ranking from the previous 117th to the latest 120th among 180 countries. It means that Pakistan, which was previously 63rd most corrupt country, is now 60th most corrupt state. Pakistan has been consistently improving its position against corruption for the last 10 years and it is for the first time since 2010 that the ranking has dropped further as against the last year despite repeated claims by the authorities concerned to have focused on elimination of corruption. This should be a cause for concern for the Government, which came to power with the slogan of tackling effectively the menace of corruption and set a model of good governance. The claim of the Prime Minister that his was the most transparent Government might be true in the sense that he himself was a clean and upright leader and he also keeps a check on performance and conduct of his team but regrettably the fight against corruption is so far restricted to a few high profile cases where as the instance of corruption has increased at the lower levels. In fact, there are genuine complaints that corruption has increased alarmingly in areas of real concern to the general public i.e. public dealing ministries, organizations and departments. A prospective investor still faces same problems as before in realization of his dream of initiating a venture, most of the officials of the utility companies are also as corrupt as before and no one can imagine to get his or her legitimate work done without palm-greasing. Same is true of lower tiers of judiciary, police, district administration, revenue department, tax bodies, irrigation department, civic agencies and even education department and public sector universities. Award of public contracts, licenses and quotas is also far from transparent and there are unending complaints of favouring blue-eyed people and firms and the issue has been highlighted at the forum of the Supreme Court as well. The goal of genuine transparency cannot be achieved only through computerization but effectively vigilance and assigning right person the right job. TI has proposed some recommendations to countries to improve the situation which are also relevant for Pakistan. It said that by managing conflicts of interest, controlling political financing, strengthening electoral integrity, regulating lobbying activities, tackling preferential treatment, empowering citizens and reinforcing checks and balances, States could fight corruption and defeat it.
