Friday, September 6, 2019

Business Recorder Editorial September 6, 2019

NAB in the dock

Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Azam Swati reflected in the Senate on September 2, 2019 the growing unease of the government ranks regarding the unbridled and unfettered powers of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), to add to the growing mountain of complaints by the opposition that NAB was conducting a witch-hunt against them. Amidst the discussion on the issue in the upper house, a Bill landed in the Senate seeking to amend the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999 to rein in NAB. The NAO was promulgated by military dictator General Pervez Musharraf and was widely seen during his tenure as a tool to win over politicians otherwise reluctant to lend their weight to his military government (the best case in point being the creation of the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid, or King’s Party as it came to be known, out of the womb of the overthrown Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and the Pakistan People’s Party-Patriots). Whatever purpose Musharraf had in mind when he trumpeted ‘accountability across the board’ after taking power, the succeeding civilian elected governments of the Pakistan People’s Party and PML-N, in a disappointing display of short sighted political expediency, failed to repeal the NAO or restructure the accountability process to divest it of malign political purpose and make it an objective and independent accountability regime. For this lapse, the current Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government has berated these two now in opposition parties and rubbed in the uncomfortable truth that the cases they are facing currently were initiated by them against each other during their respective tenures and had nothing to do with the PTI government. Swati also reiterated the government’s disclaimer that NAB was under their control. The government’s discomfiture with NAB may stem from a few cases instituted by NAB against their party’s leaders, but the real rub is that the unfettered powers of NAB have had a paralyzing effect on the bureaucracy (civil servants are afraid to take decisions that may open them up to NAB’s tender mercies) and, because of NAB cases against prominent businessmen, on the economy. NAB’s empowerment through the NAO and its predilection for turning the time-honoured principle of ‘innocent until proved guilty’ on its head has rendered the process of accountability a mockery of due process. NAB’s practice in many cases involves arrest of the accused even before or during investigations into wrongdoing and long periods of remand while their slow and tortuous ‘investigations’ meander meaninglessly to no apparent conclusion.

The Bill to amend the NAO was moved in the Senate after, according to its mover Farooq Naek of the PPP, discussions between the treasury and opposition benches on the issue failed to produce a result in the form of a unified Bill. The moved Bill has now been referred to the house’s concerned standing committee. It proposes a minimum level of Rs 500 million for cases to be investigated by NAB, bars custodial investigations and takes away the NAB chairman’s powers of arrest. It also proposes plea bargain deals only through the courts and stops NAB officers from making public statements about cases before the filing of a reference (the latter often inviting the sobriquet ‘media trial’). While this is all to the good, it amazes one that Azam Swati now says the government too will bring its own Bill on the issue within days. Why could they not have arrived at a consensus Bill with the opposition and saved parliament’s precious time? Unless the government has a different take on the amendments required to the NAO that might resolve its major issues of the paralysis of governance and removing NAB’s sword of Damocles from over the business community’s head while retaining the sharp edges of the NAO for a continuing pillorying of the opposition through NAB. If so, this would mean the PTI government has not imbibed the wisdom of amending the NAO for bipartisan reasons but may be hoping to retain its sting for continuing to drive the already under siege opposition further to the wall. Whatever short term political benefit may or may not flow to the government because of this, it may well turn out once again to be a case in future of those wanting to use the accountability process for partisan political purposes ending up being hoist by their own petard.

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