For nearly twenty years, the Mubarak government turned a

I felt it was clearly option A - all the other options had a small error at this part --> "as thousands of poor Sudanese refugees have/had built homes "

As you can clearly see, we need the simple past tense form in the above section & only option A gives it.
Hope it helps!

On the 1st look , the splits are based on the ,-ing modifier.

The 1st option looks correct at the -ing modifier is correctly modifying the clause before it.

Options B-E have tense issues. Perfect tenses are not required as used in those options as their is no time sequence relationship.

but in A the meaning is not clear what is greasing modifying?? the mubarak government or the entire clause either ways it doesn't make sense

Why is the tense wrong in E??

what indicates that simple past is necessary here?

Hello GMATNinja,

I have a query for this one. Among all the choices, A seems correct but what is the role of -ing modifier in the end.

Doesn't the phrase 'greasing' refer back to the subject M government?

I think the confusing thing about this question is that it's not totally clear who is doing the palm-greasing. And that's just a flaw in the question, unfortunately. (And most of you have seen my disclaimer: GMAC spends between $1500 and $3000 developing every official question, and it's ridiculous to think that even the best test-prep companies could possibly write anything of similar quality.)

In theory, though, the "-ing" modifier ("greasing the palms of government officials for basic services") could modify the entire preceding clause. It's just not clear whether the sentence is trying to say that "the Mubarak government turned a blind eye... greasing the palms of government officials" or whether it's trying to say that "Sudanese refugees built homes without permission... greasing the palms of government officials..." Neither of those makes perfect sense to me, because I'm not sure how, exactly, the officials ended up with greased palms from a bunch of poor refugees.

But from a grammatical perspective, the "-ing" modifier could, in principle, modify either of those clauses without any trouble.

And please don't lose sleep over the exact meaning of this particular question, since it leaves some room for debate, and you'd never see that on an official question.

I hope this helps!

Thanks for the reply GMATNinja.

The question was in reference to an article by e-gmat, if I recollect correctly, wherein it was mentioned that the -ing after the comma modifies the entire preceding clause but refers back to the subject.

e.g. used --> John became the CEO of a company, increasing his pay.

the -ing clause after the comma provides extra information but refers back to the subject John. So it was not John who increased his pay but the event or his new job or HR ( ) did that.

But I found an OG question:

Employing many different techniques throughout his career, Michelangelo produced a great variety of art works, including paintings, for example, in the Sistine Chapel, to sculpture, for example, the statue of David.

(A) including paintings, for example, in the Sistine Chapel, to sculpture, for example,
(B) including paintings, for example, in the Sistine Chapel, to sculpture, like
(C) including paintings, such as those in the Sistine Chapel, and sculpture, as
(D) ranging from paintings, such as those in the Sistine Chapel, to sculpture, such as
(E) ranging from paintings, such as in the Sistine Chapel, and sculpture, such as

OA=D, so here ideally ranging should refer back to Michelangelo but that meaning would be absurd.

So should we disregard the rule that -ing after a comma should refer back to the subject as doer of the action.

Note: there was an exception mentioned to this rule but is not applicable in this case.

Hi
Please correct me if I'm wrong - the "as" in the sentence is used to connect two clauses and the -ing (greasing in this case) will refer to the subject of the second clause which is thousands of poor refugees
Am I mistaken?

GMATNinja , MagooshExpert , VeritasPrepBrian , MartyTargetTestPrep , DmitryFarber , VeritasKarishma other experts - please enlighten