Corruption and Freedom of Press in Pakistan

Military governments operate on the premise of collective ignorance and amnesia by the public. Numbers regarding the performance of civilian governments are persistently compared to those of military governments which are always preceded by self-gratifying assertions that the country has always been “well managed” whenever it has been ruled by the military. Recently a lot of debate has been generated in the national media regarding the corruption rankings released by Transparency International in which the perceived level of corruption in Pakistan has decreased compared to that of the previous year. Moreover, there have been a number of statements lauding the “freedom” of the press accompanied by a grim reminder of the “dark” days under the democratic governments of the 90s. It is important to assess the above assertions against documented evidence by well known international organisations.

Berlin based Transparency International (TI) has recently published its annual Corruption Perception Index (CPI) of 2007. This index, developed by Dr. Johann Graf Lambsdorff of the Göttingen University, is based on the data of primarily capitalist institutions such as the World Bank, World Economic Forum & the Economic Intelligence Unit. As the name suggests, it is not based on measurable and verifiable set of data; instead it is an indicator of “perception”. Notwithstanding the biases of the data sources and the limitations of the quantification of an essentially qualitative aspect, it is interesting to review this ranking in the historical context.

Based on the data available on the website of TI (www.transparency.org), the CPI ranking is issued in order of the least corrupt to the most corrupt with the rank being determined by the country’s CPI score ranging from 10 (least corrupt) to 1 (most corrupt). The claims of the current government of “reducing” corruption seems nothing but an exercise in self-aggrandisement since Pakistan’s CPI score from 1999 – 2007 (with the exception of 2000 since data was not available for that year) was 2.2, 2.3, 2.6, 2.5, 2.1, 2.1 & 2.4. Hence the “perception” of corruption improved from 1999 – 2002, declined from 2003 -2006 and then improved in 2007. Ironically, even the best performance of the current military government (2.6 in 2002) does not exceed the CPI score of 2.7 of 1998 when a democratically elected government was in power.

The 2007 rank of Pakistan as the 41st most corrupt country is an indicator of its relative performance. Thus if Pakistan became more corrupt but other countries became even more corrupt, the rank of Pakistan would actually improve. However, as the above numbers indicate, the performance of Pakistan measured against its own past performance indicates a completely different scenario from what the current military government claims.

The second aspect of the claim of superior performance by the military government relates to the freedom of press. To substantiate this, a number of government functionaries as well as members of the intelligentsia point to the rapidly proliferating number of private channels as well as the fact that the military ruler allows himself to be lampooned in the national media. We must not confuse the apparent tolerance of a personality with the severe abhorrence exhibited by state institutions especially the military and secret agencies towards the press.

The Paris based organisation, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF – Reporters Without Borders), publishes an annual worldwide press freedom index (PFI) since 2002. The RSF compiles the index by posing 50 questions to a variety of freedom of expression organisations, journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists. These questions relate to incidents of murders, threats, harassment and other coercive methods faced by journalists of a country. A score of 0.5 is achieved by the country with the freest press and as the numbers increase the rank decreases. The figures for Pakistan are instructive: In 2002 it was 119th out of 139 with a PFI score of 44.67; in 2003, 128th out of 166 with a PFI of 39.00; in 2004, 150th out of 167 with a PFI of 61.75; in 2005, 150th out of 167 with a PFI of 60.75 and in 2006, 157th out of 168 with a PFI of 70.33. So ever since the index was published, Pakistan’s rank has been declining rapidly along with its PFI score (exception in 2003). The score for the first year of the index has to be evaluated bearing in mind that the total number of countries surveyed was the lowest compared to the following years.

Pakistan is outranked by countries such as Trinidad and Tabago, Lesotho, Uganda, Afghanistan and Iraq. The last two are highly dangerous war zones. The latest RSF country report for Pakistan states “..security forces radicalised their methods of repression: a score of journalists were kidnapped and tortured by the military.” We must be wary of such dubious freedom because it attempts to legitimise a completely illegal method of government. As Bertrand Russell said, “Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.”