Divided opinion: Lawmakers oppose curtailing NAB’s powers

PPP argues not approving bill is against spirit of Constitution

ISLAMABAD: A parliamentary body on law and justice has postponed discussions on a private bill curtailing powers of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and empowering provincial accountability bodies to stop the federal body from “misuse of power” after it ran into opposition from lawmakers.

Discussion on NAB overshadowed a meeting of National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Law and Justice on Monday where it also passed four government bills.

Lawmakers from the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party united behind MNA Imran Zafar Laghari over “The National Accountability (Amendment) Bill, 2016”. But the remaining members of the committee opposed it.

The bill seeks to curtail the jurisdiction of NAB in departments of provincial governments from the National Accountability Ordinance 1999. It also seeks to confine the ordinance to federal government departments, so that it does not have any applicability within the provinces.

Backing the bill, PPP’s Naveed Qamar said that after passing the 18th Amendment, it is the provinces which hold power to legislate in such areas and not doing so will go against the spirit of the Constitution.

“We have lost one part of the country by not agreeing to the demands of our fellow citizens and accumulating powers at the centre,” he maintained.

Qamar’s PPP colleague MNA Shagufta Jumani also backed the bill, calling it a need of the hour and that there was no harm in passing it from the forum.

Dissenting voices

Despite the arguments from the PPP members, Chaudhry Muhammad Ashraf who had convened the meeting in the absence of the committee’s chairperson Mahmood Bashir Virk, termed the matter complex.

“If we are giving the accountability powers completely to the provinces then the codes of civil procedure, criminal procedure will also need to be forwarded to the provinces, which is rather impossible,” he said as he opposed the bill.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Ali Muhammad Khan also opposed the idea of circumventing federal NAB, arguing instead that the federal body needs to be empowered while working in coordination with provincial accountability bodies.

“NAB at centre should be independent from the federal government, yet it should coordinate with provincial accountability bureaus,” he said.

“We as a nation have not reached the level when such bodies can function independently at the provincial level.”

He remarked that all powers to the provincial bodies would create issues of jurisdiction when cases emerge in areas out of that region.

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz lawmaker Moeen Wattoo said there was a need to strike a balance between powers of the central accountability body and the ones formed at provincial levels.

Later, the committee passed four government bills including federal grants for lawyers across the country. The grants would be made regarding total number of advocates on the roll of a bar council or bar association in an area. Earlier, the federal government would release grants but it was not legally protected practice.

Another bill was passed to bring jurisdiction of Islamabad High Court and civil courts Islamabad in consonance with high courts and civil courts of other provinces to reduce work-load of Islamabad High Court.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 31^st, 2016.