Basharat Peer Quotes
Corruption has also proved difficult to root out because it is not simply a matter of the powerful preying on the weak.… graft and fraud can offer ways for a poor person to climb the socioeconomic ladder.
Basharat Peer, Indian Political Scientist, Essayist & Journalist, “India’s Broken Promise”, Foreign Affairs, May / June 2012
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Most people at the time thought that political corruption was limited to politicians being bribed with money to do or not to do things. It dawned on Stephens that beyond the payment of money per se—that it could involve financial arrangements like shares in companies or tips for investment, business arrangements for family companies then or in the future or even social favors. He was the first political observer to not the variety of forms of political corruption.
When his wife Benizir Bhutto was prime minister, there was a perception of many Pakistanis that he was getting 10% graft on all government construction, development and purchases. After his wife was assassinated, he was elected Prime Minister, and the notorious nickname stuck even then.
Abramoff had bribed over 100 Congressional offices by a combination of campaign donations, paid golf junkets all over the world, free elegant meals at his own fancy Washington Restaurant, free tickets for the Congressmen, their staffs and their major constituents, to Concerts and sporting events including his own Skyboxes, and promises of future employment at very high salaries. Ironically, we was convicted of cheating some of his lobbying clients and did a jail term, but his “bribery” was technically usually legal. In addition to Abramoff, only one Congressman was charged and convicted of corruption, when many if not most had engaged in these corrupt practices. Congress makes the rules with loopholes so that what is bribery and corruption in any other setting is often not against the law if Congress is involved.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
She was the first Female President of Mauritius.
Basharat Peer (born 1977) is a Kashmiri American journalist, script writer, author, and political commentator. Peer spent his early youth in the Kashmir Valley of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir and shifted to India proper for higher education. In August 2006, he relocated to New York City in the United States, where he is currently based. He is currently an opinion-editor at The New York Times.
