KARACHI: As the opposition strongly opposed and later staged a combined walkout from the house, the Sindh Assembly through majority vote passed into law the Sindh Accountability Bill-2017 on Wednesday, paving the way for establishing a provincial accountability agency and commission in the province replacing the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
The Sindh Accountability Law will take effect in the province after nullification of the National Accountability Ordinance-1999 (NAO) as for this cause the Sindh Assembly had already twice passed a bill. The first time the Sindh governor didn’t give his necessary assent to the bill.
Once the provincial accountability law will become an act, NAB would lose its authority to take action against alleged acts of financial corruption or crime in the province. The new law has the provision for establishing accountability courts afresh in the province. The application of the new law will also scrap the already functioning Sindh Enquiries and Anti-Corruption Establishment after annulment of rendering the Sindh Enquiries and Anti-Corruption Act-1999. All the assets, staff, and cases being pursued by provincial Anti-Corruption Establishment will be transferred to the proposed new accountability agency.
Taking part in the debate in the house on the proposed provincial accountability bill, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said that the new accountability bill was in accordance with the Constitution while NAO was erroneous. He said that an effective law had been adopted to root out the menace of corruption in the province. He said that NAB was playing God as they even issued a clean chit on cases pertaining to big scandals of corruption.
The CM said that anybody could exercise his right to challenge the new provincial accountability law as he fully believed in the concept of Federation more than anyone. He dismissed all the objections of the opposition in the house on the new law, saying that Article 142-B had empowered the provinces to do legislation to tackle corruption and as such there should be no objection on the new accountability bill. He said the provinces lacked the powers to do legislation on such subjects, which were included in the Federal Legislative List. He said that Article-143 of the Constitution didn’t bar the provinces to do legislation. “We are not doing legislation on the subject of criminal laws,” said the CM.
“Although, the provinces and the Federation both have the powers to do legislation on criminal laws yet the federal law will be considered supreme as per the Constitution,” he said. He said it was wrong to state that the federal government was a signatory to any convention of the United Nations to end corruption so the provinces lacked the powers to do legislation on this subject. He said the federal govt had been a signatory to several other conventions of the UNO as the provinces had done legislation on related subjects.
“For instance, the federal government is a signatory to the convention of the United Nations on Labour but the provinces have also done legislation on this subject,” he said. He said that under the new law, the provincial government had not been empowered to appoint the chairman of new accountability commission in Sindh as a committee of the Sindh Assembly would do the same as this committee would comprise three lawmakers each from treasury and opposition benches.
The Speaker Sindh Assembly will be the seventh member of the committee to be formed for the purpose and it would not be wise to express doubts over the intentions of members of Sindh Assembly, he said.
He said that earlier the Sindh government had forwarded to the Centre names of banned organizations and religious seminaries involved in imparting training of terrorism in the province but the reaction of the federal govt on this information was highly lamentable. “The federal government replied to us that we are nobody to identify terrorists,” said the CM.
He said that NAB people were used to pocketing Rs2.5 billion out of Rs10 billion corruption money recovered by them. He said that no other agency could do its investigation once NAB had launched its investigation in a case. He said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province had its own Accountability Act and the Peshawar High Court had ruled in favour of this provincial act.
Parliamentary party leader of MQM in the house Syed Sardar Ahmed said that Sindh had done away with the NAO while the NAB law did exist in the other three provinces. He said the federal govt had the prerogative to do legislation on the subject of anti-corruption and as such federal laws were present in the country. He said that the new provincial accountability law was in negation of the relevant federal laws. He said the judiciary had viewed the NAB law as an effective piece of legislation as several cases had been disposed of under this law since 2010.
Nusrat Seher Abbasi, MPA of opposition Pakistan Muslim League (Functional) said that a wrong message was being sent out by the province by adopting its own accountability law as if Sindh had been different from the rest of the country. We will move the court against this new law, she said.
Meanwhile, a provincial accountability commission will be established under the new law passed by the provincial assembly. The proposed accountability commission will comprise five members including chairman of the commission, advocate general Sindh, prosecutor-general of the accountability agency, director-general, and director investigation of accountability agency.
Meanwhile, the opposition political parties in the Sindh Assembly have announced to move court against the new provincial accountability law passed by the Sindh Assembly through majority vote on Wednesday.
Speaking to media persons after staging a walkout from the session of the Sindh Assembly on Wednesday, the opposition lawmakers said that the Sindh Assembly didn’t possess the powers to do legislation on the subject of anti-corruption.
Parliamentary party leader of MQM in the house Syed Sardar Ahmed said that it had been made clear to the standing committee concerned of the assembly, which considered the bill in question, that opposition lawmakers did have reservations on the new proposed accountability law.
He said the Article-143 put restriction that no law could be enacted by the province in parallel to any relevant federal law. He said that concurrent list of legislation in the Constitution had been deleted in 2010 and since then several corruption cases had been disposed of by the courts in the light of the National Accountability Ordinance-1999.
He said that courts were used to recognise NAO. He said that only the federal govt did possess the right to do legislation on the subject of anti-corruption as the federal govt had been a signatory to a convention of the United Nations on the subject.
Nand Kumar of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League (Functional) said that the new provincial accountability law was in negation to Article-143 of the Constitution. He said that the new law had been adopted to rescue corrupt provincial ministers and members of the assembly.
MQM’s lawmaker Faisal Ali Sabzwari said that the opposition had rejected the new provincial accountability law in the province. Although, a six-member committee of the Sindh Assembly will take a decision to appoint the chairman of the proposed accountability commission in the province but the final decision to this effect will be taken by the Speaker of Sindh Assembly but the speaker never used to be a neutral authority.
“NAB is not at all any universal entity but owing to its presence, ministers and officials used to become fearful whenever they commit corruption or did fake appointments,” he said. “We have forwarded recommendations in the National Assembly to do amendments in the NAB Ordinance. Only corrupt people will celebrate on the passage of the Sindh Accountability Bill,” said the MQM’s lawmaker.