DAWN - Cowasjee Corner; 02 August, 1998
Brazen-faced corruption
By Ardeshir Cowasjee
IF THE corruption of our rulers stopped at taking bribes and kickbacks, and at merely defaulting on loans, we would not be as bankrupt as we are today. Having destroyed every institution in the country -the legislature, the executive, the judiciary - they have firmly institutionalized corruption in the meanest sense of the word.
Sindh has been particularly unfortunate. Most of its chief ministers have been exceedingly corrupt and to further their purposes have appointed corrupt ministers. In the ministry of housing & town planning much money is made with great facility, and what each minister leaves behind is an increasingly unhealthy and decaying environment. Abdullah Shah, chief minister of Sindh in our last government, the second Benazir government, went into hiding the day she fell in 1996, and chooses to remain a proclaimed absconder.
Anticipating corruption, Section 4-B of the Sindh Building Control Ordinance was inserted as early as 1979 specifically providing for the appointment of a Public Committee to oversee the functioning of the Karachi Building Control Authority. Despite the legislation, and despite the efforts of the citizens, no committee was appointed for eighteen years. The reason was patently obvious. Successive governments wanted no fetters on their natural propensity to rob. The law was brazenly flouted.
In 1996, caretaker minister of H&TP Maqbool Habib Ibrahim Rahimtoola (obviously not corrupt ) allowed himself to be persuaded by the citizens to constitute an eighteen-member watch- dog committee. It was composed of architects, engineers, town- planners, lawyers, builders and ministry representatives. Barrister Faez Isa volunteered to do all the legal work. Engineer Roland de Souza represented the NGO, Shehri, and I represented the weakest constituency, the voiceless people.
All gave freely of their time. During the seventeen months of the committee's life we met seventeen times. Though we were not able to control the rot, we managed to stem it. Credit for what we managed to achieve is also due in some part to the then director-general of the KDA and the chief executive officer of the KBCA, Shah Mohammad Misbah, an architect well-versed in his profession.
That the committee was effective is manifested by the fact that early this July, for no valid reason, Misbah was peremptorily transferred and the committee disbanded. All we saw was a notification issued on July 4 announcing the supersession of the December 1996 notification appointing our committee, and "in exercise of the powers conferred....... the Government of Sindh is pleased to reconstitute a committee to oversee the functioning of KBCA." The reconstituted nine-member committee is to be chaired by the secretary of the ministry who will be assisted by six minor, obedient and controllable government functionaries; two members of the ruling coalition spoilers (one PML and one MQM MPA); and one solitary non-governmental man, Citizen Ardeshir Cowasjee (described by the insulting adjective 'notable').
Why, I asked MQM minister Waseem Akhtar, has this been suddenly done? We were appointed to function for two years. All he could say was that whatever he did was well within his powers, and that since I had been made a member why was I complaining? To argue with him would have been a waste of time. The secretary of the ministry who issued the notification, Syed Faisal Saud, has also since been transferred. The new secretary, Mahmud Ali Khan, a former KDA official, professed ignorance. Chief secretary Zubair Kidwai resisted this bad move but was overridden by the decision taken jointly by MQM minister Waseem Akhtar and PML chief minister Liaquat Jatoi, each as devious as the other.
To those who may ask what did our committee of eighteen do and what did we achieve, kindly read the comprehensive report published in Dawn, on page 5, on July 31.
To those who gleefully and sheepishly ask what I myself have achieved after writing so much on the subject, and ask why the two monstrous commercial buildings still continue to rise on residential plots on the main Clifton Road, my answer is to ask them in return what they have done to help matters, in or out of the courts, here and in Islamabad. What have they contributed in terms of time and money over the years of struggle? Have they any idea of the apathy and lethargy that prevails within the ranks of the executive and the judiciary? Do they know how far the money and the tentacles of the building mafia extend?
To those who ask what I and the few that work with me are doing, I ask them what they are doing to see that the authorities act as they should. I also ask the authorities - the government of Sindh and the Clifton Cantonment Board - what exactly it is that stops them from doing their duty in terms of the law.
On to another equally serious, debilitating (and ludicrous) type of fraud, academic fraud. We read in Dawn on July 28 an APP news item informing us that the Karachi University wishes to confer upon Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif the honorary degree of LL.D. It seems that a batch of the mass of sycophants that operate in this country moved a proposal on July 25 at a meeting of the University Syndicate (the joint movers were Professors Pervez Siddiqui, Afzal Kazmi, and Dr. Haroon Rashid, Associate Professor Dr Rehana Ifzal, Assistant Professor Majid Mumtaz, Lecturer Ruhi Ahmed). They moved that the degree be conferred upon Mr Nawaz Sharif "in view of his bold decision regarding strategies of the country's defence." The other syndicate members present acquiesced. If it is confirmed at the next meeting of the syndicate, the motion will be sent to the chancellor for his approval.
On Friday afternoon, whilst talking to the chancellor, governor of Sindh and a decent human being Lt General Moinuddin Haider, I suggested that as the head of this academic institution he should protect its dignity and summarily sack the sycophantic movers and approvers for trying to make a monkey out of our prime minister.
Special Adviser to the prime minister Anwar Zahid, who still seems to be a reasonable and well-adjusted man, whose advice Nawaz Sharif might still be tempted to take, should advise him correctly. He is senior enough to remember what Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a man who knew his own worth, wrote to the Vice- Chancellor of Aligarh University, Mohammad Ziauddin, on October 4 1942 : "While I appreciate very much indeed the spirit which has activated the Court to take this decision [conferment of an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws] , I have, most reluctantly, to say that I have lived as plain Mr Jinnah and I hope to die as plain Mr Jinnah. I am very much averse to any title or honours and I will be more happy if there was no prefix to my name."
Zahid knows that Oxford refused to confer honorary doctorates upon Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Margaret Thatcher. He may also remember how, in 1987, sycophants and fraudsters of another age, without asking the court of that university, announced that the Thai University of Thammasat would confer upon the then visiting President of Pakistan, General Zia-ul-Haq, an honorary doctorate. When Thammasat was approached to lay down the red carpet, the chancellor flatly refused, as they had refused their Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanond. The Thai government was then constrained to bribe the relatively small and impoverished Chulalangkorn University to agree to confer the required degree. Very sheepishly it did so, in camera.
In 1989, Benazir Bhutto also humiliated herself by accepting, in Karachi, an honorary degree of Doctor of Science Honoris Causa from the yet to be formed Zoroastrian University of Bombay. That conferment gave the conferrer and cost the nation a cool Rs.100 crores in bank loans. The caterer-conferrer remains to this day a defaulter.
To those who ask whether we can survive as a nation, the answer is 'Yes'. Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda, all do. Whether we can carry weight in the world? Again, 'Yes'. Fifteen years of sustained hard labour may help, but only if we are consistently led by educated men, strong enough to know how weak we are. Charlatans and thieves cannot deliver.