Ebook Pakistan: Democracy or Road to Riches?

Pakistan recently elected politicians who are expected to run the government democratically and to improve the economic conditions of the people and of the country.

Is that what will happen, or will recent elections simply provide a way for the most recently elected officials to get rich at the expense of the people? An article in The Economist (Feb. 23- 23, 2008) stated that since Musharraf did not rig the Feb. 18 election, that “Pakistan’s politicians have a chance to break the cycle in which corrupt, incompetent civilian governments are usurped very few years by corrupt, incompetent military governments.”

However, the article also claimed that at least 30 percent of Pakistan’s economic aid from the U.S is still missing. So does Pakistan face a future in which, instead of a few military generals and their cronies getting rich, hundreds of politicians and their sycophantic relatives and friends get rich? Will the cycle of corruption break or will it continue? History suggests that Pakistan will continue on a path to its own destruction. I hope I’m wrong. Each past government has claimed to bring better economic conditions and eliminate corruption. These claims started with Ayub’s regime and have continued through Musharraf’s era. Did any of these governments improve the economic well- being of the people and eliminate corruption in the country? The Transparencies international (TI) and other independent agencies measure corruption (CPI – corruption Perception Index) around the world. The index defines corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain and measures the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among a country's public officials and politicians. According to the TI’s measurement, Pakistan ranks as follows:

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