SAJID ZIA LAHORE The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) seems in a struggle to keep its face after playing a vital but questionable role on the national scene against the 'corrupt for the last one decade. The NAB is operating but not firing on all cylinders which it was doing during the dictatorial period of Pervez Musharraf. At a stage when its working strength has been cut down considerably and the Supreme Court has raised fingers on the quality of its prosecution, the NAB has stooped down to take action against the low-profile and low-cadre persons like former Constable of Customs Department and another against National Saving Scheme employee. The constable has been found possessing assets beyond his declared means of income while the clerk, of embezzling over Rs 0.6 million. Catching the corrupt indeed is the domain of the NAB but the question is, whether this body has fulfilled the duties of taking to task high and the top ranking corrupt bureaucrats, civil servants, business persons and politicians before coming down for taking action against constable and a clerk. Or it wanted to show its presence to justify pubic spending when it was losing its standing in the eyes of government and judiciary on its last legs. In the beginning NAB seized many high profile cases, but most of them failed to prove in the long run due to lack of evidence and poor prosecution. Among them also included cases against former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali Zardari, Jahangir Badar, Rahman Malik, Mian Muhammad Azhar, Nawaz Sharif, Ahmad Mukhtar, Saleem Saifullah, Shahbaz Sharif, Hussain Haqqani, and others which all failed to prove before the court of law at any level. The plea bargaining, a means to settle a monetary dispute out of court to the mutual benefits of the accused and the NAB, put a big question mark against its performance although this body claimed 50 per cent conviction rate on its cases and recovery of billions of rupees. However, the efficacy and proficiency of this department could be well gauged from the Transparency International and other reports which found Pakistan standing at 38th position in the world with about Rs 1,000 billion of the public money getting wasted away in corruption. The NRO, which took away many powers of the NAB, was also a dent to the credibility of the NAB. The NAB was created by General Pervez Musharraf on a high note to purge the political and bureaucratic system of corruption with a futuristic view that the politicians of purely untainted character, unshakable integrity and morally strong could find their way to the Parliament and civil servants truly become public servant caring for every penny of the nation. Mushrraf at that time tarred the whole lot of politician with the same brush as he found them all corrupt and inefficient to run affairs of the state. However, later on Musharraf exploited the NAB to the maximum to coerce his political rivals and forced others to join and strengthen his hand to carve out a political space and a civilian constituency for himself. In this way he established PML-Q which later on earned appellation of Kings party, at the public level. During Musharraf era, NAB particularly resorted to worst victimization against the political persons of PPP and PML(N) against whom not only reference pending decisions before the erstwhile Ehtsab Bureau were overtaken by NAB but it also created new cases against the politicians and high and low cadre officers particularly of revenue, OGDC, and finance departments, for action against them. Thus this NAB more served more as a platform to sustain Musharraf in power than truly and effectively serving its rudimentary purpose. For both principal political parties, PPP and PML(N), NAB was a unwelcome platform even before they came into power. It was a sheer dissatisfaction with the NAB, that Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif while in exile in May 2005, specifically mentioned in the Charter of Democracy to abolish this body and supplant it with a Commission to hold fair, impartial , unbiased and across the board accountability of the corrupt in every section. With this view in the mind, the bill for National Accountability commission is going through the final touches.