Corruption flourishing in Pakistan under Imran Khan: Shehbaz Sharif

ISLAMABAD: PML-N President and leader of Opposition in National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif said that corruption is flourishing under Prime Minister Imran Khan.

The opposition leader was reacting to the newly-released Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) by Transparency International which reported that Pakistan has slips sixteen spots over the last year.

Sharif said that Pakistan’s downgrade for the second consecutive year is evidence that the government is corruption. “Corruption is rapidly rising in Pakistan under Imran Niazi,” he said, adding it was unfortunate that the nation was being humiliated in the world.

He said that corruption had reduced under the “honest” leader of prime minister Nawaz Sharif, and the PML-N’s good governance, ecnomic reforms and transparency improved ranking by 23 spots, but unfortunately, the efforts were erased by the current government.

He said the government’s corruption was being exposed and institutions were raising baseless allegations against others. He said that corruption increased in Pakistan from 2019 to 2021, while in reduced evey year during the PML-N’s era.

“If the prime minister and his team is honest, then it will have an effect. Transparency’s reports shows otherwise,” he said. “The report of the international organisation is an indictment of the PTI government.”

He asked the “corrupt rulers” to resign as the country cannot afford their plunder. The Opposition leader added that it is sad that the country’s image got tainted internationally due to this report.

Pakistan has ranked 140 out of 180 countries in the newly released Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) by Transparency International, an annual index that ranks countries based on perceptions of public sector corruption.

Last year, Pakistan had ranked 124. On a scale of 0-100, with zero being ‘Highly Corrupt’ and 100 being ‘Very Clean’, Pakistan corruption score stands at 28— three points lower than last year’s 31. The recent Index indicates that the perception of corruption in the public sector has worsened immensely.

The CPI ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption on a scale of zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). The CPI global average remains unchanged at 43 for the tenth year in a row, and two-thirds of countries score below 50.

The top countries on the index are Denmark (88), Finland (88) and New Zealand (88), all of which also rank in the top 10% in the world on the Democracy Index civil liberties score. Somalia (13), Syria (13) and South Sudan (11) remain at the bottom of the CPI. Syria is also ranked last in civil liberties.