Transparency International – Pakistan, which last week published a report of perceptions of global corruption showing that Pakistan had dropped three places in the previous year’s rankings, issued a clarification on Sunday saying that the decline in Pakistan’s rating does not “reflect a increase or decrease in corruption, since it is within the standard error margin.”
Chairman TI-Pakistan, Advocate Sohail Muzzafar, in a statement issued on Sunday said the CPI has not declared that in 2019 corruption has increased in Pakistan, rather, it had placed Pakistan 120 out of 180 countries in its latest report.
The clarification was issued as the “number of politicians, TV channels and newspapers have misinterpreted the report, and given wrong figures trying to damage the reputation of Pakistan,” according to the TIP statement.
Meanwhile, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Information and Broadcasting Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan had termed the report “biased” and said that it was not “fair and transparent” adding that it had also been rejected by the masses since it apparently has been managed by the “kings of corruption sitting abroad”.
The statement says that certain sections of the media erroneously reported the qualifications of the Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformation Index 2020, using the 2018 index data instead. The data for the Bertelsmann 2020 Index, according to the statement, has not yet been made public and made available exclusively to you for the formation of your report.
In response to government criticism after the report was published, the press release clarified that IT had not described President Musharraf’s government in any way as the most corrupt in the country, nor was the current government called the second most corrupt . The PML-N and PPP governments were also not called the “cleanest”.
