Corruption in Pakistan
Corruption in Pakistan involves fraudulent practices carried out by officials and institutions, ranging from petty bribery to high-profile scandals.
File:Nawazshariflondon.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|180px|Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was ousted and faced corruption charges after the Panama Papers leak.
Corruption distorts economic decision-making, deters investment, undermines competitiveness and, ultimately, hinders economic growth in the country. The problems are deeply entrenched, spanning back decades, and despite ongoing calls for reform, and many attempts to improve the situation, there is little evidence of progress.
Brief history
The Dominion of Pakistan was created as a result of the Pakistan Movement in 1947. Upon gaining independence, Pakistan inherited a strong bureaucracy and army from the British Raj. There has since been no major change in this bureaucratic set-up since it was first implemented by the British, although reforms were proposed by the Musharraf regime in 2007. This has led many to speculate that "corruption has seeped into the higher echelons of bureaucracy" where "corruption cases are reported against irregular and ex-cadre appointments". It was by the late 1960s that the bureaucracy started being portrayed as an "instrument of oppression". In multiple reports published by the World Bank, the Pakistani bureaucracy was seen as being rife with corruption, inefficient and bloated in size with an absence of accountability and resistance to change.Bureaucracy and secession of East Pakistan: 1954–1971
The bureaucratic influence was strong in the western provinces of Pakistan while the eastern province retained a majority of the population. On 22 November 1954, bureaucratic administrators moved a resolution to merge the four western provinces into a single unit called West Pakistan. This led to public outcry in East Pakistan who felt that they were being misrepresented and systematically marginalised by the land-owning Punjabi Muslim elites who enjoyed higher bureaucratic positions at the time. This led to the secession of East Pakistan into the separate nation-state of Bangladesh and lay witness to the corrupt malpractices of the Punjabi elite in West Pakistan. Punjabis argued that East Pakistan's majority was a consequence of the high percentage of Bengali Hindus in the province who were not involved in the state's decision-making processes. Thus, the Punjabi landowners remained largely unrepentant of their desires to " their own hegemony" leading to the loss of the eastern province in 1971.Nationalisation politicises economic planning: 1973–1977
After Zulfikar Ali Bhutto came into power in 1973, he introduced a planned economic system to revitalise the stagnant economy. This led to the introduction of the nationalisation programme bringing entire private industrial corporations under government ownership. In 1974, Bhutto cancelled the fourth five-year plans bypassing the recommendations of the Planning Commission, focusing entirely on broadening government control over private business enterprises. In doing so, Bhutto's government began the politicisation of economic planning.Political interference opened doors for corrupt political practices to seep into the nation's economic planning processes. The nationalisation programme badly affected the reputation of the Pakistan Peoples Party. Accumulated losses of up to Rs 254 million were reported with several instances of over-staffing and inefficient productivity in heavy mechanical industries. By 1976, the state had been hijacked by groups and individuals trying to accumulate wealth by redistributing resources from public enterprises to private individuals. Public enterprises "became a device to extend political patronage to those that the regime favoured, to pay political debts, or to accumulate power".
Denationalisation and political favouritism: 1978–1988
Bhutto's nationalisation programme lost its appeal towards the end of his government's term and the demand for denationalisation gained more currency. The successive government of military chief and president Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq released a whitepaper that led to the creation of a commission under Pakistan Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation to reverse earlier nationalisation efforts. Not much was achieved in this regard and only three industries, including future Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's conglomerate Ittefaq Group of Industries, were ever denationalised and returned to their owners. Many argued that Sharif was favoured in this process because he was a political protégé of the military dictator at the helm.Unprecedented political corruption: 2008–2013
In 2012, Transparency International calculated that Pakistan had lost more than Rs 8.5 trillion in corruption, tax evasion and bad governance in the PPP-led coalition government from 2008 to 2013.Present
From 2013 to 2017, while Nawaz Sharif was in power, Transparency International indicated a significant drop in corruption as Pakistan improved from a score of 28 to 32 in the TI Corruption Perceptions Index, even though serious allegations of corruptionwere levelled against him during that time. In the Index, 180 countries across the world are scored on a scale of 0 to 100 according to how honest their public sectors are perceived to be; a high score indicates a perception of an honest public sector.
Adil Gillani, an advisor for TI Pakistan, observed in 2012 that if Pakistan checked the menace of corruption and ensured good governance, it would not require a single penny from the outside world. The 2008–2013 PPP-led coalition government was criticised as being the most corrupt in the country's history. The free and powerful local media in Pakistan exposed various cases of corruption during the government's tenure including cases of bribery and corruption in government-owned enterprises like Pakistan International Airlines and Pakistan Railways.
On 29 March 2012, a civilian resident of Johar Town Lahore, Tariq Ahmed, filed a court petition in the Lahore High Court, seeking to hear the case of disqualification of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani. The plea was filed in the High Court in which the petitioner took the stance that "Fauzia Gillani— spouse of Prime Minister Gillani received loans of millions of rupees from the Agriculture Development Bank Ltd and the National Bank of Pakistan for the two mega-corporations owned by the Gillani family of which Fauzia Gillani served both megacorporations as executive director. None of the loans of millions of rupees were paid back to the banks. When the disqualification petition was put to rest by the ruling of the Speaker of the National Assembly Dr Fehmida Mirza citing that the petition did not hold ground, Gillani was convicted on the charges of Contempt of Court. Gillani became Pakistan's first Prime Minister to be convicted while holding office and was later sentenced and disqualified. Gillani is prudently criticised for a prolonged era of stagflation, in which fundamental economic problems were ignored, the government was mismanaged and corruption was endemic.
In the 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index, Pakistan received a score of 27, where the best-scoring country in the region received a score of 84, the average score was 44 and the worst-scoring country received 16. Worldwide, the best score was 90, the average score was 43, and the worst score was 8.
Anti-corruption efforts
Prevention of Corruption Acts: 1947, 1950 and 1958
The Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947 implemented in the Dominion of Pakistan was enacted to make effective provisions for the prevention of bribery and corruption of public servants, particularly in the bureaucratic administration. The autonomous Princely State of Bahawalpur adopted its own version of the act, namely the Bahawalpur Prevention of Corruption Act, of 1950.In 1955, an accord was signed between Nawab Sadeq Mohammad Khan V and Lt Gen Ghulam Muhammad Malik which made the state of Bahawalpur a part of the province of West Pakistan. This geopolitical change meant that the original act needed amendments to include Bahawalpur and other regions which were originally left out of the act. Subsequently, in October 1958, an ordinance was passed to extend the act to the whole of the province of West Pakistan – this is known as the Prevention of Corruption Act Ordinance, 1958. This ordinance extended the scope of the original to the districts of Karat, Kharan, Makran and Lasbela and also repealed the Bahawalpur Prevention of Corruption Act, of 1950.