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Sauce For The Gander?

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Glass-house humbugs
Brian Cloughley



When I lived in Pakistan I met many foreign visitors to the country, almost all of whom would bring the conversation round to corruption. The subject was usually introduced with an air of superiority and a shudder of moral condescension. Here they stood, they implied, as faultless examples of western values which are so much better than those elsewhere. They were visiting a country that — Oh dear me! — they had been told was terribly corrupt and how did I feel about it?

Now of course I was and remain conscious of corruption in Pakistan. Who could not be aware of it? It’s all around and very upsetting. From the fat traffic cop (always distrust a generously-tummied policeman) brutally extracting a few hundred rupees at a checkpost, to an MNA who sells gun licences (and who knows what else), via the bureaucrat taking a brown envelope to “expedite” (love that word) an application of some sort, and the “facilitator” who can wangle so much in the world of commerce — they’re all on the take.

But I defended Pakistan against the foreigners and said that, yes, there is a lot of corruption — but consider your own country, where there is also much dishonesty, bribery and other financial shenanigans, and don’t throw stones from your glass houses.

And they would look at me in disbelief and mutter that I had “gone completely native”. Well, maybe I was over-protective. But my suspicions about the honesty of many Western politicians have been given impetus by recent revelations of sleaze
.

In the record of international corruption compiled by the saintly organisation Transparency International, there are some interesting statistics. Pakistan is 134th out of 180 countries appearing in the Index. Not as bad as Ukraine, the Philippines, Iran, Russia, Venezuela or Bangladesh, but still pretty grim.

And where are the Western nations, these paragons of virtue? Right up at an admirable 5 or 10? Well, not quite. Italy is at 55, well below Malaysia and Bhutan; and Israel is a very suspect 33, with Spain at 28, and even my beloved France doesn’t do terribly well at 23. The UK is two places less corrupt than Japan and the United States, both at 16.

But what is actually counted as corruption in Britain and America?


Transparency International does an excellent job and its conclusions are precise. But it can’t include systematic dishonesty as practised by western politicians, simply because hardly any fraud cases come to trial. There are very few measurable criteria, but it is apparent that many of these artful dodgers would sell their souls if reasonable offers were made, and that their deceitful financial frolics can’t be dealt with through the laws of the land — because they make the laws.

Take the four British Lords who recently have been identified as squalid little crooks. Now, there was a time when Lords were effective legislators in spite of many of them having IQs in the low teens and self-esteem in an absurdly high register. But they did have a bit of style and civilisation. Nowadays, however, New Vulgar Lords possess amazing smugness and a talent for greed that would attract the admiration of a mediaeval Levantine usurer.

This quartet of corrupt Lords offered to amend laws in return for money, and one said to an undercover reporter for Britain’s Times newspaper that “£100,000 is cheap for what I do...I will work within the rules, but the rules are meant to be bent sometimes.” (Just like a fat traffic cop.) Another of these reptiles offered to assist in changing a law for payment of £30,000. Then he whined, “I did not agree to amend the legislation. I agreed to seek to help to find a way of trying to amend the legislation.” How pathetic.

Pakistani policemen who take 500 rupees from drivers they falsely accuse of traffic violations are one thing, but these fat prats of privilege, these jumped-up pompous vulgar humbugs, are already rich. They just want more. And of course they’re not going to be charged with any offence. The police will not pursue the cases against them. What a surprise. What scum.

Then there is a prominent tax cheat in America, a politician called Tom Daschle, who President Obama had wanted to be Health Secretary. The superior Daschle, a prime Senatorial pain-in-the-neck, was found to have avoided paying bags of tax and to have had “conflicts of interest” in his financial affairs. He was forced to withdraw as the President’s nominee after his swindling was disclosed, as was another candidate, an equally rotten rip-off expert called Nancy Killefer, because similar fiddles came to light.

Would these impudent cheats have been exposed if they hadn’t been proposed for high office and thus investigated? Of course not. Which makes us wonder just how many other US politicians are crooks.

British and American politicians are experts in working swindles (although not as skilled as members of the European Parliament), and have created scams that are actually legal. They can claim vast expenses by using cunningly contrived rules that they make themselves. Take, for example, the UK’s home secretary, a conceited and incompetent apparatchik called Jacqui Smith. She lives with her sister in London when attending parliament, yet claims that house as her principal residence and thus gets thousands of pounds a year in allowances. And the taxpayers meet the £40,000 annual salary of her husband who is her “adviser”.

There are countless other examples of sleaze, of course (and a book could be written about the industry), but the tricks of western politicians make fat Pakistani traffic cops look positively angelic
. The next time you hear British or US legislators fulminate about the dreadful corruption in Afghanistan, for example, just think about their own grubby jiggery-pokery.

Glass-house humbugs, the lot of them.


Brian Cloughley’s book about the Pakistan army, War, Coups and Terror, has just been published by Pen & Sword Books (UK) and is distributed in Pakistan by Saeed Book Bank
 
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Interesting article, It is true corruption is everywhere...
 
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