Corruption in Pakistan
Corruption in Pakistan is widespread, and involves fraudulent practices carried out by officials and institutions, ranging from petty bribery to high-profile scandals.
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.
[6] 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 resistant to change.
[11] 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.
Punjabis argued that East Pakistan's majority was a consequence of the high percentage of Bengali Hindus in the province[13] who were not involved in the state's decision-making processes.
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 (PICIC) to reverse earlier nationalisation efforts.
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This ordinance extended the scope of the original to the districts of Karat, Kharan, Makran and Lasbela and also repealed the Bahawalpur Prevention of Corruption Act, 1950.
It called for the establishment of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as an autonomous federal institution building efforts to combat cases of corruption, financial crimes and economic terrorism in Pakistan.
According to the ordinance, NAB was granted authority to launch investigations,conduct inquiries, and issue arrest warrants against individuals suspected in financial mismanagement, terrorism, corruption in private, state, defence and corporate sectors), and direct such cases to accountability courts.
Following are a few of the major corruption scams and scandals reported and exposed in the mainstream Pakistani media: In the wake of 2013 elections, massive electoral rigging was alleged through first-hand accounts of several members of the public via social networking websites.
Specialised websites were set up to publish and archive material exposing corrupt malpractices throughout the many polling stations serving several constituencies.
[45] Even before the elections, social media served as an effective tool to hold the nation's to-be-leaders "accountable" for various issues like corruption and education.
[47] Adding to the mix, several prominent politicians have moved to the likes of Twitter to gather support and get prospective voters on board and analysts think that this can lead to a better and direct accountability of political leaders.
When asked of the actors involved, 33.62% people said court employees, 23.73% said public prosecutors, 14.12% said witnesses, 12.43% said judges, 8.19% said opponent lawyer, 4.52% said magistrates while 3.39% mentioned others.
Further factors for failing standards in state-run institutions include lack of funding, non-utilisation by elite classes, appointments of under-qualified faculty.
[57] For a brief time during the regime of Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan received unprecedented investments in its higher-education sector – this funding faltered with the arrival of Zardari's government after 2008.
[63] This situation has persisted since the graft watchdog's July 2010 survey,[64] in which it was noted that the major cause for corruption in this sector was due to a lack of accountability and merit, and low salaries.
[61] Citizen journalists upload instances of police officials taking bribes on social networking and video sharing websites like YouTube.
[70][71][72][73] Following these events, on 15 November 2011, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Zaka Ashraf established an anti-corruption unit to prevent players from becoming involved in illegal betting practices.
