Govt divided as opposition united to do away with NAB

ISLAMABAD: The opposition parties are unison to abolish National Accountability Bureau (NAB) but the ruling party has to find consensus to deal with the outfit that greatly helped the government in achieving its target to “target the opponents.”

Sharp difference of views has developed in the cabinet members, advisers and state ministers on the question. Well-placed political sources told The News here Wednesday that one group in the government which is working with the opposition legal experts for fine-tuning legislative business pertains to the accountability is of the opinion that the present accountability body should be made toothless so that it shouldn’t steamrolled its target may be chosen by itself or assigned by someone else.

This group is of the view that the NAB that has been ruthless about the people who chose its head could be furious when gets an opportunity to take on the incumbent. That will the time when no repent helps. The other group is asking for making the NAB laws further stringent and it is asking to include some other offences in its purview which must be treated as corruption and security issues.

The sources said that first the ruling party leadership will have to reconcile differences among its ranks. Later the government will have to sit across the table with opposition which is united in the matter. The government is keen to get the matter resolved before the end of the parliamentary year and during the ongoing sessions of the two houses of the Parliament which will go for a recess next week.

Leaders of the major opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, party’s Secretary General Professor Ahsan Iqbal, Khawaja Asif and Khawaja Saad Rafiq have voiced their demand for abolishing the NAB a day earlier in the light of the verdict of the apex court in Khawaja brother’s bail plea and soon after them Maulana Fazlur Rehman who is the leader of third largest opposition’s group in the National Assembly made the similar demand on the same day.

Now the PPP which is the second largest opposition group in the Parliament has also come out on Wednesday with the demand to scrap the NAB and existing laws with regard to accountability. The two major parties have suffered a lot at the hands of the NAB and its unjust cruel tactics. It was the NAB that helped in manipulating the polls outcome of 2018. The PPP has demanded that the NAB be abolished and its chairman, Justice (R) Javed Iqbal should resign and go home. The PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari while referring to the Supreme Court’ (SC) slamming the anti-corruption watchdog for its “utter disregard for the law” in its verdict in the Paragon Housing Society case, made the demand. “Our first step should be to end NAB and shut it down as it’s a scar on the face of the legal system of Pakistan,” Bilawal said while addressing a press conference here.

He said that after the top court’s verdict there was no reason for NAB to stay. “The NAB chairman, who was a judge at one point, should resign if he has any respect or has read the judgement,” he added. “If the highest court in this country has put it out there then we cannot leave it just here. The Parliament should act at once,” he said. He added that NAB should “clarify” itself as the SC order said that it was not taking action against the government’s mega corruption cases. “The Bureau should launch an investigation into the foreign funding case, BRT, billion tree cases, special assistants’ assets declaration and dual nationality cases at once,” Bilawal said.

The PPP chief said if his party had made such a declaration then they would have been “facing an asset beyond mean cases and the media would have declared them as traitors”. “If our system is two-faced then how can the NAB chairman come and say accountability will be done from head to toe?” asked Bilawal, calling for an end to the “joke” that was being done with Pakistan.

PML-N leaders, including Khawaja Saad Rafiq said a day earlier that history bears witness that the descendants of those who had strived for the creation of Pakistan were mistreated but there is “no precedent for what happened this time”. “This trend, of injustice, must be stopped.”

The SC on Monday in its detailed verdict on a bail petition filed by PML-N leaders Khawaja Saad Rafiq and Khawaja Salman Rafiq in the Paragon Housing Society case highlighted severe lapses in due process and legal procedure by NAB. In the detailed, 87-page ruling, penned by Justice Maqbool Baqar, the court highlighted the definition and purpose of bail as well as due process in criminal cases. According to the judge, it was unfortunate that “even after 72 years since the creation of our country, and despite 47 years since the adoption of the Constitution, we have not been able to realize the spirit and essence of the ideals set out there in”.

Justice Baqar went on to say that the present case was “a classic example of trampling fundamental rights, unlawful deprivation of freedom, and liberty and the complete disregard for human dignity as guaranteed by the Constitution”. The judge also slammed NAB over various actions and processes, saying its “conduct throughout this case is a clear manifestation of their utter disregard for the law, fair play, equity and propriety.”