One "honest leader" is rarely enough. Even if many leaders are "honest" government can fail if such people refuse to acknowledge that men of goodwill can reach different conclusions and advocate different policies even when acting upon the same information.
Nor can you rely on a leader who trumpets his own honesty. Nineteenth-century U.S. President Andrew Jackson is a good example: he ran a scurrilous campaign accusing the incumbent of malfeasance but his Administration proved to be one of the most corrupt in U.S. history with top Jackson supporters appointed to government office only to behave exactly as you describe Pakistani officials behaving today (luckily government was a much smaller part of American life in those days). The "honest" citizenry who had been bamboozled had no alternative, having put all their faith in a general who, even if he was inclined to be honest, nevertheless had to make all sorts of compromises to build an Administration since he had no life-long network of acquaintances in civilian government to fill such posts.
(Perhaps Andrew Jackson should be studied by Pakistanis; he strikes me as the closest American parallel to leaders like Zia and Musharraf.)
