Thaindian News

Islamabad, Oct 28 (IANS) Pakistan should learn from Bangladesh on how to curb corruption as it continued to slip on the global corruption index, while Bangladesh made remarkable progress in weeding out the menace, a Pakistani daily said in an editorial Thursday.

Pakistan went up to 34th place this year from the 42nd position in 2009 on the global corruption index brought out by the Transparency International (TI).

“We need to assess how Dhaka went about the task of weeding out corruption. There is no shame in learning from others,” The News International wrote in an editorial.

Bangladesh was ranked one of the world’s most corrupt country by TI in 2001, 2002 and 2003. This year it bettered its ranking to 39th place, well below Pakistan’s position.

It has also seen a GDP growth of five percent, significantly better than Pakistan’s 2.4.

The dividends of fighting corruption are many but given the situation Pakistan finds itself in, this could literally be a matter of its survival, the editorial said.

Corruption not just reflects the manner in which a state is run, but also shows the quality of governance, viability of the economy and perceptions of people.

“What would be shameful is to do nothing at all,” it said.

There are other countries too that have made progress. Chile, Ecuador, Macedonia, Kuwait and Qatar also fared well in the TI report this year.

“We need to ask ourselves if we, in anyway, are less capable than these countries,” it said.

“Why can’t we do more to tackle corruption. The rotten smell of it surrounds more and more places in our country,” The News International said.

“We have learned to accept corruption as something we cannot escape from. Many of us pay petty bribes to get our work done; when we do so we fall in with the system. Of course citizens cannot be blamed for this.”

“Alone they cannot fight a monster that has grown and grown. But collectively we need more groups to come forward to tackle a sickness that has already destroyed much of our society. Other nations have found the will to fight back. We must do the same,” it wrote.