Purification Process

Diogenes going about with his lighted lantern in broad daylight looking for an honest man would find happier hunting in Pakistan today. Under the brisk reforming broom of President Ayub Khan's military regime, corrupt officials of the old, free-spending order are being swept out of office in droves, and newspapers run regular casualty lists, stating name, rank, misdemeanor and punishment. New Chevrolets, once a man's conspicuous mark of distinction in Karachi streets, are now hidden away in garages, and one businessman even painted his fire-engine-red station wagon a dull grey, happy to have it no longer "an eye-catcher." A strolling policeman no longer accepts the gratuitous glass of iced sherbet from the street vendor, under pain of prosecution for them both if he does. Office "peons" no longer demand "tea money" for leading callers to officials. Karachi's once-flourishing cafe society stays home, has abandoned the nightclubs to foreigners. As one businessman, who has made $2,000,000 in the past four years, put it, sipping his drink in private in his home: "Why provoke the tiger?"

"The tiger"--in the form of screening committees set up in General Ayub's anticorruption campaign--began by putting the government's own house in order. By July 1 more than 2,000 civil service officials, clerks and policemen had been punished: through dismissal, retirement or demotion. Even the top officials heading the screening committees were themselves investigated by a Cabinet committee made up of the Foreign Minister and the Ministers of Law, Interior and Finance. Next in line for a thorough checking of their activities since 1947: Pakistan's politicians. Businessmen, currently operating under a promise of amnesty, have wisely poured into Pakistan tax offices to make a clean breast of their affairs and have forked up an astonishing $6,300,000 in back taxes.

General Ayub's simple ambition: to make Pakistan live up to the literal meaning of its name, Land of the Pure.

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