HOW much our political leaders own or possess is left to conjecture and how they came to acquire their wealth is a topic of street gossip. The people have a right to know but this is denied to them.

The rules of conduct require all politicians to make a full disclosure of their assets and income to the election commission when they register to contest polls. Many don't and those who do are hardly ever called upon to explain how they acquired their wealth. If such a probe was ever held, the finding was not made public.

Parliamentarians worldwide are vulnerable to temptations to stop them from crossing the floor. We cannot indict our lot alone. Nevertheless, we can safely say that their integrity generally conforms to the country's ranking in the world corruption table, which is close to the bottom. Transparency International's report represents the perception of foreign investors, dealing mostly with ministers and senior officials.

Going by common observation we can say that on the scale of integrity, a run-of-the mill voter stands on a higher pedestal than the candidate for whom he votes or the official whose help he seeks to get elected. The common man is compelled to offer a bribe to meet his legitimate needs while parliamentarians and officials extort it. Need has a limit, greed has none.

Members of the mother of parliaments (Westminster) testified to this when quite a few among them were found claiming rent for a home when they had one in London. The redeeming feature of that shameful episode was that no one who cheated was spared. All had to live with the consequent indignity.

Concerning our own parliamentarians reports keep surfacing of their keeping official lodges when they have houses of their own. The medical bills of many are said to run in sums as if they were perpetually sick. Such allegations may be exaggerated but many among those abusing concessions go unpunished.

In any case, no member of the national or provincial assemblies or the Senate has ever been heard of being reprimanded much less disqualified for such transgressions. The accountability bureau hardly ever acts on its own — only on government reports which are invariably against defiant or defecting politicians.

Some time ago, the prime minister denied the existence of corruption in his government. Finding the assertion preposterous, he conceded in a speech to donors that corruption was 'blooming' in the absence of good governance. Again, he got the sequence wrong. Governance is bad because corrupt men have been chosen to govern.

The prime minister is surely aware that hardly any appointment, or promotion, is made on merit. The two unknown persons who came from nowhere to head the national oil and gas company and insurance corporation would not have been eligible for appointment even at the entry level if merit had been the criterion.

Such instances are irksomely repeated but from the custodians of governance there is not a word of explanation for heaping ridicule on the country and exposing its prize assets to plunder. Then came the Haj scandal that but for a Saudi prince's direct communication to Pakistan's chief justice would not have come to light. The alleged culprit hauled up surely couldn't be acting on his own.

The prime minister must not seek to blame the professional administrators for corruption as it is well known that appointments in the religious affairs' ministry and other ministries are made by circumventing the competition system. The religious affairs' ministry should have been headed by someone with an administrative background, not by the sage of a shrine.

Till 1971 the Haj operations were managed by the director general of shipping. This writer, as district magistrate of Karachi, would assist him and once in a while, recalling his old tribal connection, would slip in the name of a Mohmand or a Chitrali elder who couldn't make it in the ballot. There was not even whiff of a complaint. The DG then, Commodore Zahid Hasnain (later promoted to admiral), is still around and alert enough to confirm it.

Governance then occasionally gave way to compassion but bribe or nepotism never came into play. Now the Haj directorate is just a drop in the ocean where politics predominates. The politicians, as in government jobs, also want Haj quotas.

Until Haj once again becomes a sacred trust in the hands of naval commodores and district magistrates which it must one day, I would urge the president and more so the chief justice of Pakistan to adopt South Africa's rule that requires the prime minister and every other minister to file a statement of gifts, benefits and financial interests held by them or any of their family members at home or abroad with a 'public protector' whom no one dare defy. Even Nelson Mandela had to comply.

When this writer was in South Africa for a few weeks earlier in the year, the current president Jacob Zuma had missed the deadline for filing the return by a few months. He was fearing punishment if the protector did not find his reasons for delay plausible.

How one wishes that soon, if not straightaway, Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry is appointed Pakistan's first public protector. Given a chance this writer would then like to do his bit by working as a kind of sorter of priorities in his office along with others but without a hierarchy of command.

The condition precedent would be that the public protector, as in the former apartheid republic, is appointed by the president on the recommendation of a judicial commission.

It was an inspiring sight to see the black, the Asiatic and the white as also the pimps, courtesans, and subcontinental women laden with jewellery all roaming the streets of Cape Town past midnight without worry.

kunwaridris@hotmail.com