Sink or swim

The top, all the way along, has been rotten to its core, rot has steadily permeated downwards as deep as it can get.

The media and the public is once again (it has been sporadic over the many years) mired in an obsession with corruption as it is in this fair republic that is Pakistan. The corruption mania this time around seems to have come as some sort of revelation, which is amazing as, apart from the fact that corruption has indeed reached new heights — or depths — under this present dispensation, it is nothing new.

Corruption in one way or another has been around since the birth of the country when grabbing properties, left by those non-Muslims fleeing over the border, in an illegal or mendacious manner set the future tone. Abandoned properties were fair game for the grabbers — as opposed to the legitimate to whom they were allotted justifiably. Just exactly what percentage was kosher cannot be gauged but for sure a goodly number of the supposedly upright and influential misappropriated thousands of properties to which they had not valid entitlement. This is well known and oft-repeated, but now, after the glut of corruption that has grown over the years, is largely put aside and conveniently forgotten.

Dipping into the national exchequer is and has been the norm for far too many members of the damaging governments that have come and gone, and tax evasion, from time memorable, has been the order of the day for all who are not caught up in the compulsory tax declaration and payment system. So presumably, the present hullabaloo is generated by the sheer scale of the present corruption — tax evasion being very much a form of most despicable corruption.

But it is not restricted to the politicos. The main factor concerned with them as what they have termed their ‘perceived smearing’ is that generally, in normal democratic countries, those elected as representatives of the people are expected to somehow be morally more upright and honest than the ordinary run-of-the-mill common citizen.

Again, they never have been as far as this country is concerned — their ‘smearing’ is and has been there since the start. They have been regarded by the establishment and by the electors who installed them as latter-day robber barons as — to repeat that now well-known phrase — ‘bloody civilians’.

And remember that after all, in the rotten 1990s, four governments were dismissed, one common charge against them all being corruption. Never mind that in most cases it was not proven; we all know it was there and besides, as someone once famously remarked, thieves do not issue receipts.

The top, all the way along, has been rotten to its core and the rot has steadily permeated downwards as deep as it can get. We are all caught up in corruption in one way or another in our daily lives, plush or measly as they may be.

A little story was running around the internet some weeks ago. Its moral can be interpreted in several ways; one makes one’s choice.

One fat frog and one skinny frog, in a search for food, accidentally jumped into a vat of milk, not full, and could not negotiate a way out, up the slippery sides. They paddled and paddled aimlessly and soon the fat frog tired and said to his companion, no use going on paddling, we might as well give up and drown. His skinny companion suggested he hold on as something might turn up to rescue them. Hours passed, the fat frog grew more and more tired and morose and declared they were doomed and he was just going to give up. His companion exhorted him to keep going and hope. But Fatso eventually gave up and drowned. Skinny persisted regardless, paddling and paddling, relentlessly, hoping for a miracle. And lo and behold, after hours of perseverance, he felt something solid beneath his feet. He had churned the milk into butter. And out he hopped.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 22^nd, 2012.