There is now widespread consensus within Pakistan that critical to a well-functioning democracy, and to Pakistan’s stability and progress, is that elected officials must be held to the highest possible ethical and integrity standards.
While Articles 62 and 63 have many subjective features, if applied transparently and objectively they would minimise the capture of our governance system by legislators with abysmal ethical standards. They have wrecked public institutions, undermined rule of law and promoted corrupt practices. Worst of all, they have raised doubts in the minds of ordinary people about the desirability of democracy.
Bold mechanisms and criteria need to be introduced by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for transparently and objectively implementing a ‘filtering process and criteria’ which ensures that the pool of contesting candidates meet the spirit of Articles 62 and 63, and usher in good governance.
First, it is critical to strengthen the current ‘disqualification’ criteria, specified in Article 63, by requiring that only those citizens can contest who pay ‘personal’ income tax. Paying taxes is a fundamental obligation of all citizens of means. Tax evasion and avoidance cannot be accepted or condoned, especially of those who wish to be public representatives.
In this respect two sub-criteria could be used to establish whether a person is faithfully paying income tax. The first sub-criteria should be that all contestants, whose income is above the income threshold established by law, should have filed returns for federal personal income tax and/or provincial agriculture income tax for, at least, the past three years.
The proposed criteria, whether a person has filed tax returns, is easily verifiable and meets the test of transparency and objectivity .So if a candidate has not filed returns for any of the above two taxes, they should be automatically disqualified, unless they can prove beyond a shadow of doubt that their incomes were below the threshold.
The second sub-criteria on tax behaviour, is whether the income reported and taxes paid appear reasonable when compared to the ‘lifestyles’ and asset ownership of most legislators. The tax returns must be audited to ensure that there are no mis-declaration and underreporting, and that the ‘observed lifestyle’ is consistent with the income declared on tax returns.
Implementing these criteria will not be easy, especially within the proposed 30-day scrutiny period and also since ‘forensic auditing’ is difficult and can be subjective. Despite these challenges, auditing tax and asset returns will be absolutely critical to determining whether taxes are being faithfully paid. Underreporting and mis-declaration is an objective ‘proxy’ indicator of dishonesty and unethical standards which cannot be accepted for elected representatives.
Second, candidates must be required to file nomination papers electronically (say, within 24 hours of filing their nomination papers in person). Given the widespread use of IT and internet, especially among the income group that potential legislators belong to, electronic filing should be required so that the public has real time free access to information provided in the nomination papers. Given the very short proposed 30-day scrutiny period, electronic filing would make public scrutiny very easy and also enable the public to provide their comments to the ECP quickly.
Third, nomination forms should be strengthened by requiring the following additional information: (i) details of agriculture and foreign income, if these are the main source of income as claimed on tax return. These income sources are usually used to conceal illegal income. If a person claims that remittance from close relatives (or foreign business income) is the main source of income, they should be asked to provide proof (eg tax returns or salary/business income of close relatives ) which would support the level of foreign remittance reported in tax return; (ii) customer account numbers of utility connections in all houses owned (and occupied) by contestant, spouse and dependents, so that utility payments can be easily verified; (iii) household expenditures for all homes (including rented homes) occupied by contestant, spouse and dependents. Underreporting is very common for such expenditures so as to conceal unreported income; (iv) NTN numbers and campaign contributions of all individuals and companies that contribute more than, say Rs5000 in cash or kind, to a candidate’s campaign.
Fourth, ‘abuse of office’ must be added as a disqualification criterion. The majority of legislators and cabinet members have indulged in egregious ‘abuse of office’ – misuse of official assets and vehicles, unauthorised expenditures, undue influence in award of public contracts and appointments, including abusing executive authority to appoint unqualified people.
Right away, the ECP could ask the auditor general, principal accounting officers in the federal and provincial governments, and heads of public enterprises, to provide information on those current legislators and cabinet officials who have indulged in ‘abuse of office’.
Finally, the ECP needs to have the capacity to transparently and rigorously screen the several thousand nomination papers (and attached documents) within the proposed 30-day period. It would be an Herculean task. In fact the first review should be completed in 20 or so days so that applicants have a week or so to respond to any unfavourable observations, before the ECP makes a final decision.
The following is recommended: (i) The ECP requisition the entire FBR’s income tax officers and engage as many tax accountants from the private sector, to form a few hundred ‘audit teams’ to scrutinise and ‘field audit’ tax returns. Audit must be done by a team to minimise individual discretion. The number of teams should be adequate to finish the audit in 20 or so days, spending at least 1-2 days on scrutiny of each candidate.
(ii) Form a committee of retired senior civil servants and judges, of known high integrity, to scrutinise the ‘abuse of office’ reports submitted by departments and enterprises.
The ECP has an historic opportunity to turn the page on ‘assemblies of the corrupt, for the crooks, and by the dishonest’. For Pakistan’s sake it needs to take bold steps to filter the political sewerage.
The writer is a former operations adviser at the World Bank. Email: fffhasan@gmail.com
Abid Hasan, "ECP can make history," The News. 2013-01-23.Keywords: