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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