Nepra joins
anti-NAB chorus
The National
Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has now joined the growing chorus
of critics of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). In its State of the
Industry Report 2018, NEPRA has challenged the intrusion into its affairs by
NAB. The Report says almost all of the projects on which Nepra had made power
tariff determinations have been questioned by NAB, and the way the
investigations are being conducted has completely stifled the morale of Nepra’s
professionals. Nepra laments that the boundaries of its regulatory jurisdiction
have been breached by NAB, boundaries beyond which NAB cannot intervene. The
Report emphasised that a holistic approach was urgently required so that the
confidence of the power sector in general and that of its regulator Nepra in
particular, were not unduly undone. It is significant that one of the Director
Generals Nepra, Insaf Ahmad, has been detained by NAB and is under trial. This
issue has apparently been raised at the level of Prime Minister Imran Khan. Former
senior officials of Nepra are also facing investigations, which has sent a
negative message to incumbent officials. The thrust of Nepra’s report points in
the same direction as the effect of NAB’s activities vis-à-vis the bureaucracy,
businessmen, and opposition politicians. The bureaucracy, it is being reported
since even before the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government came to power
in 2018, has been paralysed in its decision making because of the fear of being
‘nabbed’ by NAB. Business confidence has plummeted to an all time low because NAB
has not spared those entrepreneurs accused of corruption, whether for themselves
or allegedly as front men for opposition political leaders. Parliament and
democracy stand emasculated because top opposition leaders are almost all
behind bars, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader and former leader of the
opposition in the last parliament, Syed Khursheed Shah, being the latest
elevated to this ‘rogue’s gallery’.
The problem with
NAB’s ‘standard operating procedure’ is that persons suspected of wrongdoing
are arrested even before a charge or reference has been filed against them.
NAB’s excruciatingly slow investigation process follows, which often leaves
detainees languishing behind bars for months or even years. This track record
points towards the incapacity of NAB to conduct investigations speedily and
efficiently. There is also concern about the level of expertise available in
NAB to tackle complex technical issues as demonstrated by former prime minister
Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s arrest and interrogation in the LNG case. All this
underlines the need for building capacity and expertise in NAB to prevent those
charged, either before or after references have been formally filed against
them, being unnecessarily incarcerated for long periods while NAB’s snail-paced
investigations merrily wind their way without reaching any conclusive outcome. The
political opposition has suggested that the NAB chairman’s powers of arrest
should be done away with and arrests only made after references are filed and
the courts adjudicate the need or otherwise to detain the accused. After all,
the jurisprudential principle that the accused should only be detained if there
is a danger of them slipping away or abroad needs to be adhered to. And
speaking of jurisprudential principles, the NAB process because of the way its
law has been crafted, assumes the guilt of the accused ab initio, justifies its
arrests on that basis, and leaves the onus of proof of innocence on the
accused, thereby turning on its head the long established principle of law and
due process that the accused must be considered innocent until and unless
proved guilty of the offence. So much so that even Chief Justice of Pakistan
Asif Saeed Khan Khosa has weighed in with the expression of concern that the
NAB process appears more and more to be partisan political engineering that is
rapidly losing its credibility. Of course the very opposition leaders being
targeted by NAB must by now be ruing their neglect of the repeal of Pervez
Musharraf’s National Accountability Ordinance 1999 and the consequences that
have flown from it. To add to the tangled web, the NAB chairman himself has of
late been embroiled in controversies about character and uprightness. This
whole NAB mess has brought life and work in the country to an undesirable pass.
Saner voices and heads need to come together to overcome the negative and
malign effects of NAB’s peculiar modus operandi and perceived partisanship.
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