OVER the long weekend, I spent three days and two nights at the beach. Alone excepting when some friends dropped in for dinner one evening, I swam, read, cooked, gazed at the stars and listened to the sound of the sea.

Everybody should be able to take off once in a while, shedding all responsibility and do absolutely nothing. But few urbanites manage to escape their daily grind, caught up as they are in the rat race and their domestic chores. Karachiites, in particular, are not great outdoor types, and just as well: as it is, the beach tends to get overcrowded on Sundays. But fortunately, my stretch of the beach is fairly deserted, especially on weekdays. I buy whatever the local fishermen have caught, and the catch includes all kinds of fish as well as lobster and crabs which are barbecued or stir-fried. I think I am a beach bum at heart, condemned to serve a lifetime sentence in the city. But one day...

Friends are surprised that I spend so much alone. "But what do you do?" they ask. "Mostly nothing", I answer. And that is precisely the point. Freed from the need to take decisions and communicate, the mind roams across time and space, plucking up odd memories and playing with strange ideas. Occasionally, this mental meandering coalesces into a coherent thought pattern, but mostly it floats away like a child's soap bubble.

This last weekend, I was preoccupied with the whole question of public morality. Having written about Benazir Bhutto's conviction last Saturday, I was trying to work out why people like her and Nawaz Sharif are so greedy. They have everything going for them: good health, wealth, popular support, and in Benazir Bhutto's case, good looks. So why do people like them want still more? Why risk what they have for a few millions more?

In a recent international conference on corruption held in Washington, Vice President Al Gore recounted a fable told by Saadi in his impressive speech: "A king and his army stopped at an orchard where the king ate two apples. He was amazed to see his general walk up to the farmer to pay him. 'Why did you pay him? Surely he was pleased that his king ate his fruit.' 'Your Highness, if you had eaten two apples without paying for them, your soldiers would have stripped the whole orchard'."

And this is exactly what is happening here: when the leadership is busy looting the country, nobody should be surprised when their minions follow suit. And with Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto taking turns at sticking their snouts in the public trough, there is no longer very much left to steal. Even before them, their military and civilian predecessors made hay when their particular sun shone. This sequence of one lot of crooks following another reminds me of another fable that I recounted in these columns many years ago:

"A Good Samaritan was walking through the woods one day when he saw a wounded fox lying nearby with his cuts covered with flies. The traveller shooed the flies away, and was walking away when the fox cried out in a piteous voice: 'What have I done to thee, O cruel stranger, that thou should worsen my plight?' Amazed, the traveller turned and said: 'But I have done thee a good turn by forcing away the flies that tormented thee.' 'O wicked and ignorant man, know thee not that the flies that sat on me were sated, whereas the ones who will now settle on my wounds will be hungry and will therefore suck what remains of my blood'?"

But unlike the fox, we are in control and in theory at least, should be able to stop the flies from sucking us dry. Unfortunately, even when we go through the motions of electing a new government, the best we seem able to do is pick yet another collection of crooks. Is there no way out of this cycle of corruption? Amazingly, even when a politician is convicted on the basis of overwhelming evidence, supporters and party hacks will shut their eyes to the truth and insist that their leader is as innocent as a newborn babe. Presumably, come the next election, PPP diehards will do their damnedest to foist BB (or her nominee if she cannot hold public office) on us yet again, just as Nawaz Sharif's cohorts will exert all their considerable sinews to grab another term for their party. And like the wounded fox, we will be unable to ward off the hungry flies from our carcass.

For many years, I supported BB on the basis of her being the lesser of the two evils. Finally, at the height of her rapacious second stint in office, I said to myself that I had had a bellyful of evil of all description, and could no longer support her government in good conscience. Indeed, I made the cardinal mistake of going overboard and actually voting for the PML because I reasoned that I could neither vote for any sectarian or religious party, nor did I want to abstain. Also, I kidded myself into believing that a sharp businessman like Nawaz Sharif would be good for the economy. Like many of us, I forgot that sharp businessmen only look after number one. But one lives and learns. However, despite all the bitter lessons we have learned over the years, we seem incapable of applying them to good use.So where do we go from here? Are we perpetually locked into a vicious cycle of corruption and poverty, or can we break free? It is an unfortunate fact that none of the major actors currently strutting on the national stage inspire much confidence. Nor do either of the mainstream parties appear capable of purging themselves of their corrupt leadership.

In his speech, Al Gore also quoted from Kant and his concept of "moral man." Basically, the philosopher held that there is a certain universal morality that transcends religion, race and geography. All faiths agree that it is wrong to kill, lie and cheat. Indeed, even non-believers accept this credo and live by it. So why is it that well-to-do Pakistani politicians who profess to be Muslims rob and break all the rules when they are in power?

Maybe, just maybe, the Pakistani voter is now so fed up with corrupt leaders that instead of voting along party lines, he will vote for the best candidate in his constituency. This way, there will be no 'heavy mandate' and every possibility of a coalition government of reasonably clean politicians. I agree that this is a very far-fetched idea, but then I tend to be optimistic when I am vegging out at the beach!