Transparency versus corruption

Transparency International (TI) recently announced that Pakistan ranks 34 out of a list of 178 countries perceived to be most corrupt by its own citizens. The fact that Pakistan has slipped eight places in just one year is quite a damaging assessment. Especially since this assessment has come at a time when flood victims in the country are dependent on international aid, the inflow of which has already been hampered due to fears of rampant corruption in the country.

The governor of Punjab and our ambassador to the US have been quick to use the social networking site Twitter to attack TI, claiming that it is neither transparent nor international, and have questioned the validity of a perception index. It seems futile to claim that TI is not an international organisation, given its presence in 80 countries. Dismissing the validity of a perception index, which aims to convey the perception of people and not make emphatic claims about the actual prevalence of corruption, is also problematic. Corruption perceptions of ordinary people do have validity and cannot simply be dismissed.

This is not the first time our government has been offended by assessments made by an international organisation. The International Crisis Group offended the National Reconstruction Bureau when it debunked the whole devolutionary exercise carried out by General Musharraf to give more power to locally-elected representatives. Much offence has been caused by our dismal rankings on the Failed State Index prepared by US based magazine Foreign Policy. This year, we have slid down to the 10th most failed state. Many are distraught about the Pakistani state being lumped together with Somalia and Sudan or even Iraq and Afghanistan.

Perhaps it was this growing sense of indignation which provoked the Sindh Assembly to take collective notice against the TI ranking. In the ensuing debate, one minster reiterated the suspicion that most NGOs are promoting an insidious global agenda and called for increased government auditing of NGOs. The provincial law minister, however, wisely asked for disclosure of the sources of information which convinced TI to rank Pakistan so dismally. This is a much more reasonable demand.

Instead of unthinkingly blaming all NGOs, our public representatives should demand that organisations aiming to make such serious claims back up their assertions with a transparent methodology or else be held liable to defamation.

In this year’s survey TI Pakistan took opinions of just over 5,000 people. Is this considered an adequate sample size to gauge the views of 177 million citizens? Also, there may be a selection bias in the survey. In the future, the international community must realise that it needs to urge transnational organisations to demonstrate stringent research integrity, or else be ready to face defamation litigation. This is the best way to ensure that the backlash against half-baked assessments does not translate into constricting space for NGOs doing constructive work across the developing world.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 12^th, 2010.