Moral and material bankruptcy

One must fear for a nation when its people openly and viciously exhibit their contempt for it by word and by deed. This has always been a worry, and it was brought home decisively of late. A friend, who had just returned from a trip to London, described how the passengers on a PIA flight queued up in orderly fashion at Heathrow when checking in, and proceeded in equally orderly fashion to the aircraft. Once boarded, the aircraft, pride of the national airline, became a mini-Pakistan, with men and women pushing and shouting, scrambling for seats, boarding cards being meaningless. Order had been left behind, abandoned. Things worsened when the passengers disembarked at Karachi. Those same people who had patiently queued in London barged and charged at the immigration counter and when my friend remonstrated with one highly objectionable character, reminding him of his behaviour at the other end and requesting him to stand in line, the answer he threw back was a scornful "but this is Pakistan" The same Pakistanis who drive their cars in Dubai, carefully observing every traffic rule, return to Karachi and happily disregard the traffic lights on their route, the excuse being, "but this is Karachi" Then we have the disgraceful behaviour of the up and coming youth of Pakistan, the future makers and shakers of this country, who on the eve of Independence Day, remove the silencers from their motorbikes and career merrily and freely up and down the roads of our cities without a care in the world. They may die or injure themselves in the process, but so what? There is no one to stop them, there is no law enforcer who has the nous or the courage to enforce the law. Why is it thus? Why do the people regard Pakistan as being a land where literally anything goes? Well, it all boils down to the quality, or rather lack of it, in the leadership, to the type of men and women the people perceive sitting in Islamabad in the Senate and National Assembly, and sitting in the assemblies of the provincial capitals, and the lesser minions who mirror the top lot and sit in all our government offices - and so it has been for decades. With the passage of time and the deterioration in the quality of the civil or military leadership the country has been forced to suffer, a type of moral bankruptcy has beset the nation, at all income or educational levels. This is evidenced in our daily life and in all activities necessary to either survive or prosper. This is Pakistan where, to use the phrase so aptly uttered by our erstwhile revered but now vilified president, General Pervez Musharraf, when asked at the end of 1999 about corruption in the military replied: "We are all of the same stock." The national moral bankruptcy is highly evident each time the ballot boxes are brought out, in our sporadic intervals of what is known here as democracy, when the voters, seriously voting with their feet, bring back the same old tired and tried characters who have let them down time and time again. Corruption there always will be, as there always has been though earlier on in the life of this nation of lesser magnitude. Corruption could possibly be condoned if it went hand in hand with competence and good governance, but when a country is bereft of any signs of law and order, when ineptitude is rife, corruption of the material and moral breed cannot be condoned in any manner - and certainly not through an ordinance such as the NRO which was brokered between political individuals here and abroad in manner highly mala fide. This time round, it has taken less than a year and a half of democracy to wreak its revenge by the media outing of tales of corruption in high places which, if we are to go by the sacking of the Steel Mills chairman, are all valid. We are regaled daily by our media with sordid accounts of how the country is robbed, not only by those who rule and are paid to govern but who do not, but by those who do business and supply none other than our law enforcing agencies. One company allegedly imported bullet-proof jackets which were declared to the customs authorities as floor mats. The defrauding of a fraudulent government and individuals is the order of the day, and when it comes to the paying of income taxes why is it we have no full listing of the assets held by our elected representatives and the income tax they pay? The IMF have ruled that for a stable economy in a developing country 15 percent of the GDP should be in revenues - Pakistan has a ratio percentage of only 7.2 percent (our large neighbour on the other hand has managed 16 percent). Yet more evidence of the moral bankruptcy - and material corruption - that overrides all. The so-called pillars of state are wonky and wobbly. The legal fraternity is on the rampage, buoyed by the success of their two year movement brought to fruition by a political party and its leader. They have thrown to the winds any semblance of law and order which supposedly provides them with their livelihood. The writer is a freelance columnist. E-mail: jilani.amina@gmail.com