Democracy means transparency

As the majority of the people live below the poverty line, they are tortured and shocked every day as the prices of all essential commodities are rising but they have no good source of income or any opportunities to struggle for a better tomorrow. This chaos and discrepancy forced them to adopt corruption to survive, thus exposing them to manipulation and exploitation by the agencies. As such, they have been isolated and are at the mercy of these agencies and are the tragic victims of circumstances that are beyond their control. This entire situation completely disenchanted them from the political, economic and social process and has eroded the moral values. What we have gained and how much we have lost in the name of so called democracy since our independence is very clear to all of us and despite being aware of all the hazards most of us still blind and chanting slogans of democracy. As there is not a single institute which is not affected by the cancer of corruption and in almost all government financial transaction, there are almost 50 percent kickbacks, commission or just simple misappropriation of funds. The recent circumstance reveals that how much our national exchequer is being misused by the elite families, where the poor are begging and the rulers are busy in the profligacy claiming themselves survivors of democracy. How could corruption be eliminated? And how much we are daring to remove this? As still we have very weak electoral system, lack of political will, interference by legislators in executive function, low parliamentary integrity, complicated and non transparent taxes, lack of impartiality of public accounts committee and failure of legal and judicial frame work to deliver justice. The general perception is that the law enforcing agencies, criminal acts committed by the police department, having accounts in foreign banks, not declaring exact assets by the politicians reflects very badly on the state of corruption in Pakistan and contributes negative image of the country. Unfortunately, no one of us dare to face the reality and conveniently pass the buck to others and instead of making tall claims and issuing high sounding statements government should examine the extant of corruption in its entirety, starting it with their own, from the government offices, customs, income tax, excise and taxation, civic agencies and government departments. According to information cases of massive evasion of income and sale tax are common and there is no single department where corruption is not exists.All such circumstance has deprived the poor and nothing has left for him. How much we raise slogans in the name of democracy and people those who say that a weak democracy is better then dictator ship should be called mad in the recent scenario of our miserable country. Democracy means transparency and equal rights to all, so if any politician who claims that we have good democracy which enough fulfills our requirements should come to the public and should prove that democracy is better then dictatorship, as most of the people in Pakistan not yet understand the differences between democracy and dictatorship.]]>