Fawad Chaudhry Terms CPI Report From Transparency International ‘Senseless’

Fawad Chaudhry Terms CPI Report From Transparency International ‘Senseless’
Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry has cast doubts on Pakistan's faltering score in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index (CPI), claiming that there is no evidence to suggest either the rule or law or financial corruption have worsened over the past year.

Pakistan dropped to the 140th position out of 180 this year, the worst ranking the country has received since 2010. The report was published several day's after Advisor to the Prime Minister on Accountability Shahzad Akbar stepped down from his role.

Chaudhry instead said the current Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) administration had achieved 5.37 percent growth amidst a global pandemic, according to the World Bank, despite facing an 'organized mafia' in the opposition.

He accused the media of fabricating reports about the CPI ranking's significance, saying that allegations of financial corruption had been added to the press release to sell headlines.

https://twitter.com/fawadchaudhry/status/1486206064546746370

Chaudhry' boss, Imran Khan, has cited Transparency International's credibility on various occasions in the past, especially during his bid for the premiership, as 'anti-corruption' and financial transparency became a central tenant of his campaign.

In one instance in 2010, the video of which has resurfaced online, Imran Khan referred to the ‘big criminals in the government who had broken all records of graft.’ He said that, according to Transparency International, the only area in which Pakistan was succeeding was corruption.

Transparency International, a global watchdog group, has been publishing its CPI report since 1995.  The report ranks countries "by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys."