The Recipe for Pakistan to Rebound - II
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. - David Brinkley, Television journalist

Let us first make admit that Pakistan is not fairing well in any field. It stands denuded, and is leaderless. And the people of Pakistan clearly have one choice left to them: find a leader at their earliest, but certainly not from amongst the present lot.
“A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position”, says John C. Maxwell, an expert on American leadership. Our current leadership lacks passion as well as vision, and is only after positions.  Like a bad archer, these leaders of Pakistan keep missing the target; they never pause to adjust their aim, and their priorities, or get rid of their distractions. Instead, they keep accusing the target.
John C. Maxwell is right when he says in his book, ‘The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader’ “failure to hit the bull’s-eye is never the fault of the target. To improve your aim, improve yourself”. And the element of improvement is what is missing in our leadership.  The result is obvious.
Roger Fritz, the author of “Little Things - Big Results”, 2000, explains such leaders through a story, ‘An old farmer had been plowing the same field for forty years. Every time he carefully avoided a rock, because it had caused him to break many edges. One day he got fed up, took his crowbar and smashed it. The rock easily shattered. It was only six inches thick and could’ve been easily moved”. The question is: why hadn’t he solved his problem sooner? Name that ‘rock’ whatever you like: absence of democracy; corruption; lack of justice and law and order; extremism; wrong economic policies; total absence of accountability; military interventions etc. The fact of the matter is that all these problems have been just a crowbar away from the people of Pakistan. Any genuine leadership, equipped with a sense of priorities, passion and concentration, would have easily smashed these ‘rocks’ long ago. Leadership in Pakistan made these ‘rocks’ as a valued asset, to be used in elections as a poster slogan against their opponents. Instead of eliminating them, they preserved them as legacies to be used as a tool in a blame-game.
In my previous article, I had contended that democracy is a good form of government if it is accepted in totality. Holding elections is just one part, a means to get into power and perks. This exercise becomes dangerous and defective if it is not accompanied by a mechanism of effective accountability, and an honest judiciary. Our leadership believes only in the first part. The other two parts, (had they been present in the system), would have dispatched these leaders to nothingness long ago. The result is obvious. Though in a hole, they haven’t stop digging as yet.
HOW DID OTHER COUNTRIES WIGGLE OUT WHEN IN CRISIS?
There are ample examples around us by emulating which we can easily set our house in order.
SINGAPORE: The saying is that no non-democracy has ever been as rich and as successful as Singapore. When it got independence in 1965 from Malaysia, it was poor, racially as volatile as Pakistan, and strategically as vulnerable again as Pakistan. It was just a tiny dot wedged between Malaysia and Indonesia. In size it was so small that it was often referred to as a city-state. It could easily have been devoured by the countries that surrounded it. But nothing can destroy a person or a country that follows the rule of justice, merit and truth.
Today, Singapore is counted as one of the twenty-five richest countries of the world, one of the most highly educated and efficiently run country, and above all and most importantly (as acknowledged by the international business community), as one of the least corrupt countries in the world. And all this without being a democracy. Singapore records one of the highest sustained rates of economic growth in the world, and it has amassed the largest foreign reserves per capita in the world. There is hardly a superlative that does not apply to Singapore.
Its ruling party, People’s Action Party (PAP), in the 2006 parliamentary elections won eighty-two of the eighty-four seats; its founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew ruled it for forty years in an authoritarian way, and now it is his son who rules it. No lovers of democracy have raised a finger at Singapore’s autocratic form of governance.  The system worked, because it delivered what a good system should.
The salient features of Singapore’s success are:

1. The ruling party, PAP, enjoys peoples’ appreciation and confidence because it delivers what it says. There are no two faces. It performs what it professes.
2. The system may not allow dissent or opposition for opposition sake, but it also does not allow the spread of any kind of disinformation about anything. Distortion of facts is a serious crime with unthinkable consequences.
3. Corruption is ranked as number one state enemy. It is the most targeted priority.
4. Judiciary bankrupts those through fines who play with the public interests.
5. Once a person is declared bankrupt, he becomes disqualified to hold any public office. Politicians think hundred times before indulging in corruption or falsehood.
6. Merit is the main religion in Singapore. Cabinet ministers are world-famed individuals, and are incorruptible. Some ministers earn salaries over one million dollars a year.
7. In Islam we often hear that cleanliness is half part of Faith. Singapore actually proves that. Once it lashed an American student who was found guilty of writing graffiti on the walls. Not even the American President could save the boy from the punishment.

VIETNAM: Vietnam shares many problems with Pakistan. While the whole world is rushing to Vietnam to invest, it is shunning Pakistan with the same speed as if Pakistan were afflicted with plague. Even Pakistan’s own main leadership does not trust Pakistan’s banks. They have conveniently created their second-homes outside Pakistan with the money that should never have been there. The stock market,  as in Pakistan, is nose-diving in Vietnam, and according to Business Week of July 7, 2008, “it is down by 60% since January. The housing prices have been off by a third; inflation runs at 25%; a trade deficit is ballooning, and the currency, the dong, is headed south as people buy dollars and gold”. A senior fellow at the Institute of Development Studies in Hanoi, Mr. Le Dan Doanh, says, “Vietnam is facing its most difficult times since the beginning of economic reforms”. Why is the world with its $11 trillion plus Foreign Development Investment (FDI) Fund queuing up to invest a major part of it in Vietnam?
FDI by definition means “An investor based in one country acquiring an asset in another country with the intent to manage that asset” (OECD, 2000). Michael J. Pease has a problem Ford Motor executives in the US can only dream of, says Business week of July 7, 2008. They cannot meet the demand in Ho Chi Minh. It is not Ford alone that is doubling down. Taiwanese heavy industry giant Formosa Plastics is gloating over for having got an OK from Hanoi to invest $7.8 billion in steel mill, power plant, and port. Samsun intends to build a $670 million mobile-phone assembly plant outside Hanoi. The government of Vietnam has approved $21 billion in foreign direct investment, just over the amount given the green light in all of 2007. Why such an optimism in the wake of such dire economic forecasts?
Foreigners foresee a bright future for Vietnam. There is a strong prediction of gross domestic product growth of 7% in 2008. Last year it was 8.5%. Nobody sees the economic turmoil in Vietnam as a fixture. Investors are confident that Vietnam will rebound in strides.  They all believe that it is a short-term phenomenon. And Vietnam is not a democracy.  It had been in a state of war over a period of 150 years. It fought a major prolonged war with a Super Power. Yet it remains a favorite spot for the FDI!
The reasons are obvious:

1. Vietnam is finally at peace, and its economic growth trend confirms that soon it will surpass its neighbor, China, or even India. War or war-like situation is an anathema to FDI.
2. Though ruled by a Communist Party, which will keep ruling it till 2008-12, its president, Nguyen Minh Triet, and its prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, are all set to remain in power. So there is stability in the government, and a feeling of continuity in its economic policies.
3. Most importantly, both the leaders are economic liberals with a very strong anti-corruption credentials. Both stand committed tooth and nail to combat graft wherever it is. They are following a Singaporean model.
4. Vietnam did not stay entrenched in the US Hatred syndrome though it lost over 7.5 million people against 58 thousand American casualties. It yet sought to maintain close ties with both the US and China.
5. It became a member of the World Trade Organization that will further improve its business operating environment
6. It enjoys sustained economic growth of about 8%; is undergoing great industrial expansion; has great consumer spending public; and has verifiable fixed investments. No such thing as cooking accounting ledgers.
7. Most importantly, it has a well-educated, skilled young labor force
8. The government is taking strong measures to curb inflation; it has announced spending cuts, and is beginning to lift the veil of secrecy that long had shrouded its thinking on the economy. The central bank has hiked bank interest rates.
9. The government makes good on its promise to administer the tough medicine the economy needs, says Business Week of July 7, 2008. Investing in Vietnam is easy; taking the invested money out of the country is very difficult.

Even Columbia is coming up by leaps and bounds. FDI in that country has doubled; real estate prices have tripled in many areas. In recent years, according to Duanelhelleloid, in a book, “Extreme Investing: Inside Colombia”, as reviewed in Business Week of July 7, 2008, “cash first went to countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China. Next it went to slight riskier places such as Turkey, Poland, and Vietnam.  Investment is now flowing into even riskier places, such as Colombia”. Pakistan figures nowhere, not even in the list of most risky countries. Colombia became increasingly attractive since Alvaro Uribe became president in 2002. He tried to build confidence and trust in the country and its government. But how? He curbed crime in Bogotá, the capital, and Medallion, once a hub for the drug trade; encouraged and strengthened the business community and made environment so conducive in the country that foreign-educated Colombians are now beginning to return to their motherland to set up businesses and take advantage of rising property values and the availability of foreign investment flows. The key factors in Colombia’s comeback had been: control of corruption, and establishing law and order. 
TAIWAN:
Robert Elegant, in his article ‘Taiwan: Past and Present,’ says, “It is clear that Japan has more cash than any other country. The United States, still theoretically the richest, has more debts. But how many know that the second-largest hoard of cash in the world belongs to the Republic of China? And Taiwan is China in microcosm.” This 14,000 square-mile island of Taiwan, this pygmy, little place is the second among the cash-rich countries of the world. In 1989 Japan’s foreign-exchange holdings were $97 billion; of Taiwan’s $75 billion. Taiwan like Singapore is a textbook success story of our times.
Once its capital, Taipei, was dusty, grimy, and stench-ridden. Its atmosphere was medieval. In the words of Robert Elegant, “a less likely prospect for economic and industrial stardom would be hard to imagine”. The place was a virtual wasteland. In 1951, Taiwan’s total exports had been to the tune of $58 million. In 1988 its total exports rose to $60.6 billion. In 1951 each individual’s nominal share of the GNP was $48, in 1988 it became $6,045. This is called progress.  Today perhaps Taiwan is the only place where ‘the people are moving from satisfaction to repletion and, perhaps, satiation with the extraordinary variety of goods available in the specialty shops, supermarkets…” says Robert Elegant.  Taiwan set examples of order, discipline and progress that became  role models to be emulated by the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong. If religion can discipline a nation, then Confucianism  did that in Taiwan. It became for its people a way of life, a moral code, and a manual for rulers, and a handbook for officials.
 “Once a visitor boasted to Confucius that discipline in his state was so perfect ‘that a son will even denounce his father for stealing a sheep’. The sage replied, ‘With us, the relationship between father and son is more important than the value of a sheep. Here the son would not denounce his father’ ”. Most mandarins are upright, moral, disciplined and hardworking. Every boy can get admission by passing the entrance examination; can rise by the merit of his work. Taiwan’s civil service and examination system has become a model for all the countries of East Asia. Even for the West. No nation on earth has more PhD’s from the top American universities than Taiwan. Education, honesty and uprightness made what Taiwan is today. The motto of the leadership in Taiwan is: “ Those at the top must look after those at the bottom, and they in turn must toil cheerfully…” Starving people can never be toiling or cheerful as is the case in Pakistan.
There are substantial rewards for good behavior and severe punishments for bad behavior in Taiwan. Taiwan is not just a modern industrial county; it is a post-industrial-nation. Order, education and discipline are the key words there. (To be continued)

 

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Editor: Akhtar M. Faruqui
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