Replacing NAB: Govt abandons legislation on new accountability panel

PML-N and PPP remain divided on major issues related to replacing NAB.

Almost four years after it announced to replace the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) with a similar but a milder commission, the government now seems to be backtracking from its commitment fearing political backlash.

A proposed legislation seeking to establish a new body for undertaking the accountability — a task currently assigned to the NAB — is pending in the National Assembly standing committee on law for some three years now with no sign of achieving a consensus on the draft.

Abolishing the NAB was among the first few announcements of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani after taking office in 2008. Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has been calling NAB an arm for political victimisation.

The PPP and the PML-N managed to resolve only two out of four contentious issues. The two remaining irritants were: who should head the commission and whether the accounts of public officeholders in foreign banks should be frozen by Pakistani authorities in case of graft charges against them, a condition having a reference to President Asif Ali Zardari.

Another disputed issue was that the PML-N wanted the government to allow authorities to freeze the foreign accounts of corrupt countrymen. The original draft of the proposed bill did not have this clause. With less than a year remaining in the tenure of the current government and given the turmoil on the national political horizon, the passage of the bill appears highly unlikely. And the PPP members of the National Assembly standing committee on law aren’t shy to admit that.

“I don’t see it getting through parliament during the tenure of our government. Consensus looks hard to achieve,” said Justice (Retd) Fakharun Nisa Khokhar, a PPP lawmaker on the panel deliberating the bill for years now.

“I don’t see any reason why the government just go and get it passed from the house. The consensus in committee is not a legal requirement,” added Khokhar, whose legal background makes her an appropriate person for comment on the bill.

But unlike Khokhar, chairperson of the committee Nasim Akhtar Chaudhry appeared convinced that the government would still be able to establish the new accountability commission to replace the NAB during its tenure.

“We are going to do that after budget…and with consensus,” she told The Express Tribune.

PPP insiders, however, said the government wasn’t interested in the idea anymore because even if it managed to get the bill passed from the National Assembly and the Senate, erecting a huge establishment that the legislation proposed would be difficult.

“We will never like to see somebody else taking advantage of our initiative,” said a PPP member.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 26^th, 2012.