By Shazia Anwer Cheema
Corrupt politicians and a corrupt political system is the catchphrase of today, the decadence in terms of political, social, cultural even esthetic levels all sum up to one resolution of Pakistan having corrupt politicians and a corrupt political system.
This conveniently excepted perception leads to the idea of replacing financially corrupt politicians with so-called financially honest and upright politicians and the corrupt political system with an honest political system. We, without defining and thus not properly understanding the term corruption generically try to oversimplify it; let’s try to explain corruption for that matter prior to discussing who is corrupt as a tag phrase.
Imran Khan visibly defied the Constitution and Parliament by claiming that these institutions are corrupt which is not only illogical but also farcical
Corruption is not a process rather it is an outcome of a process, this is the first mistake we make while dealing with this linguistic unit, semantically corruption or corrupt is either quantifier or qualifier which qualifies a noun or verb, so in simple words, corruption is an adjective or an adverb and always require a host agent to refer to. Corruption itself is seldom used as an action it is always an outcome of an action, that prompts the question of illustrating the actions which qualify as corrupt, usually, the actions which do not follow the designed frame of work and frame of reference for a course of action, these are also known as set rules and patterns based on norms, conventions, traditions, and prescribed law. If everything is making sense till now, then to sum up we can say that corruption is a result of a process that achieves the set goal/purpose/task by not abiding the set rules; which will of course trigger the next hypothesis that what forces a process to flout conventions or rules, there is no single answer to this question though but the closest probability is incompetency and incapacity to perform the task within the set parameters.
The systems Imran Khan is blaming for his incompetence are in fact the filters that filter right out of wrong by set conventions and laws, meaning neither he could hustle his way around them nor he can find his way through legal trajectories and that for me is next level of incompetence
When an individual or a system is unable to do an assigned task in the legal or conventional, normative parameters then that individual and system hustles its way around, and that hustling care for no rules and boundaries, the primary objective is to achieve the goal but due to the process which was deviated because of incompetence and incapacity produces corruption as an outcome.
The so-called corrupt politicians were systematically replaced by the rhetoric of honest politician Imran Khan, but so-called honest politician (Imran Khan) put the system on halt
Society is based on norms and conventions which lead to a legal system and they work in harmony to regulate the smooth flow of living, their purpose is to facilitate society, it is never an antagonization of society, again an incompetent individual and system try to find its way out by sometime superseding the set rules or other times deviating them by deliberately avoiding them.
Having said that I categorically nullify the term corrupt politicians and corrupt political system and want to replace them with the suggestion of incompetent politicians and incapacitate political system, to solidify that I will remind you of the change of the political system in 2018 when the so-called corrupt politicians were systematically replaced by the rhetoric of honest politicians, but objectively we could hardly find any difference during so-called honest politician’s rule, ironically so-called honest politician (Imran Khan) put the system on halt, from foreign affairs to IMF, introducing 90 percent legislation through Presidential Ordinances instead of enacting it through the Parliament was one of the reasons for Khan’s incompetency to deal with the system laid down for lawmaking, Khan created chaos of the sort which exposes the rotten system and the brutal reality that it is functioning on hustling.
Imran Khan questions the role of the same institutions which are infect crafted for society by society to make him and everybody else law-abiding citizens, instead of following the norms, rules, and conventions he questions their legitimacy meaning by he wants to apply a self-serving set of rules design by him to facilitate him
The so-called corrupt politicians and tested corrupt system had at least mastered the art of finding their way out but self-claimed honest ones even failed to get out of this rotten smelly dungeon of politics, as an obvious reaction they got panic and started blaming everything possible for their failure, my prime concern is not about the accusations and blaming Imran Khan is doing, my concern is his admission of failure; his actions and speech admitted considerably high volume of the reasons he failed, which all boiled down to one fact that he is incompetent to perform the action in defiance within rules. Consequently, his political system was as corrupt as his predecessors because he too proved to be incompetent to perform the task which he claimed will perform efficiently.
Moreover, Imran Khan visibly defied the Constitution and Parliament by claiming that these institutions are corrupt which is not only illogical but also farcical, the systems he is blaming for his incompetence are in fact the filters that filter right out of wrong by set conventions and laws, meaning by neither he could hustle his way around nor he can find his way through legal trajectories and that for me is next level of incompetence.
Imran Khan questions the role of the same institutions which are infect crafted for society by society to make him and everybody else law-abiding citizens, instead of following the norms, rules, and conventions he questions their legitimacy meaning by he wants to apply a self-serving set of rules design by him to facilitate him, in doing so he denies the very essence of a civil society that society make rules for its own greater and broader good and when they formed everybody has to follow them.
So, corruption is a lack of efficiency and commitment to the system and by that definition, all politicians are corrupt because they are unable to deliver according to law and conventions. They are all simply incompetent and whatever they do is by design corrupt as they are incapable of finding solutions by following the rules.
The real problem is not corruption, it is incompetence and the Pakistani political system is by default incapacitate and whatever the actions are, the by-product is always corruption.
Note: Writer Shazia Anwer Cheema is an author, columnist, and foreign affairs expert who writes for national and international media. She is a doctoral student and researcher in semiotics and philosophy of communication at Charles University in Prague. She can be reached at her: Twitter @ShaziaAnwerCh Email: shaziaanwer@yahoo.com
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this article/Opinion/Comment are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the DND Thought Center and Dispatch News Desk (DND). Assumptions made within the analysis are not reflective of the position of the DND Thought Center and Dispatch News Desk News Agency.
