Right of bail to be given under new accountability mechanism

ISLAMABAD: Parliamentary work for a new but robust accountability mechanism has slowed down but sources in MPs’ body, set up to recommend new anti-corruption system, still hope that the draft law for the National Accountability Commission will be prepared next month.

Real challenge for the parliamentary committee remains to develop a consensus for across-the-board accountability i.e. covering all including judges and generals. The committee has proposed that like members of parliament, all civil and government servants including bureaucrats, judges and generals, would also be bound to make their annual wealth statements public.

According to parliamentary committee sources, unlike the “draconian” aspect of the present NAB law where those taken into custody by the Bureau are not entitled to any bail for 90 days, the proposed draft law gives right of bail to the accused. 

There is also an agreement that the existing provision of “Voluntary Return” would be done away with whereas plea bargain will be allowed only by the decision of the court. For those whose plea bargain is accepted will however be disqualified for life for any government job or public office.

The parliamentary committee, comprising members from both the houses and constituted a few months back to evolve new law for anti-corruption state apparatus, has agreed during its first few sittings to replace the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) with a National Accountability Commission (NAC).

It was deliberated and decided too that the proposed NAC would not be chairman centric but would be supervised and overseen by an independent commission. The term of the NAC chairman will be three years as against four-year tenure enjoyed by the NAB chairman.

The committee also discussed the definition of corruption and corrupt practices, and recommended certain changes and few additions.

Right from its initial deliberations, the committee has been discussing the issue of across-the-board accountability to bring generals and judges under the umbrella of civil anti-corruption bodies but it remains undecided. 

“Now the dominant majority of the committee wants to extend the scope of such a commission to generals and judges too but no decision has been taken as yet,” a source said.

In the present system, judges and generals are excluded from purview of the prevailing National Accountability Law. They were excluded with the argument that both the institutions have their own internal accountability system.

The committee with 20 members was formed by National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq on Jan 5 to amend controversial NAB law. The committee was given three months to prepare and present its report to the speaker regarding the necessary amendments in the NAO, 1999. 

Early next month, the committee will complete its three-month period but it is expected to get an extension in view of incomplete work. The committee has already held six sessions and it is said that in three more sittings it will complete its work.