ISLAMABAD - The PML-N-led government is working on a plan to introduce a more powerful and independent accountability mechanism in the country, sources informed The Nation yesterday.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has tasked his legal team to come up with proposals how to replace the existing National Accountability Bureau with some more vibrant and independent accountability mechanism, the sources in the ruling PML-N further informed.
The ruling PML-N was under constant pressure from opposition parties, mainly Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, to free the NAB from the governmental control and make it more independent in its working.
PTI Chairman Imran Khan on a number of occasions had said that ruling PML-N and main opposition party were covering up each other’s corruption and that was the reason both these parties in their successive governments in the past had done nothing to establish a strong and independent accountability mechanism in the country.
The legal team was working on some proposals to replace the National Accountability Ordinance with some new laws to grant administrative and financial autonomy to the National Accountability Bureau, a Federal Cabinet member confirmed to The Nation.
“Yes they (legal aides) are looking into the work already done in this connection by the parliamentarians body during the previous government led by PPP and will take good things from it while preparing the fresh draft for legislation to make accountability apparatus in the country more powerful and independent,” he further said.
A parliamentarian who remained part of the deliberations of then National Assembly Standing Committee on Law and Justice on replacing National Accountability Bureau(NAB) with more powerful and vibrant accountability commission said both PPP and PML-N had agreed to all points and there were only a few points of disagreements between the two relating to the financial autonomy and powers of the new accountability apparatus which could not be resolved and the proposed piece of legislation had lapsed with the culmination of the National Assembly term.
He further said that PML-N government had spent half of its five years term but had not done any concrete work on bringing in place a strong accountability mechanism to check the growing corruption in the country the point Supreme Court of Pakistan had mentioned several times while taking up the issues relating to NAB and its pending cases.
He recalled that PPP soon after coming into power in 2008 had decided to disband National Accountability Bureau but as it had come into existence as an act of the parliament the PPP government with thin majority could not do legislation on it. However, on the persuasion of the then opposition led by PML-N the matter was placed before the National Assembly and then referred to the standing committee on law and justice and could not be tabled before the house for legislation owing to differences between the treasury and opposition benches on a few key issues of granting it economic and administrative authority.
The chairperson of the then National Assembly Standing Committee on Law and Justice, Begum Naseem Akhtar alleged that both PPP and ruling PML-N did not want to see powerful accountability mechanism in place as both the parties were stuffed with corrupt people.
When asked, she said they had several dozen meetings specifically on the matter and except a few things rest of the draft bill for National Accountability Commission(NAC) was finalised and it was beyond comprehension why ruling PML-N was re-initiating deliberation on it because they simply should take input of stakeholders on controversial points to evolve consensus on it. Otherwise, they could get it through from Lower House of the Parliament on its own.
She alleged that both PPP and PML-N were the real hurdle in the way of bringing a powerful accountability mechanism in place for obvious reasons as both the parties were filled with corrupt people and that was the reason to avoid tuff accountability filters.
She said that right now with a few points of discord the lapsed draft bill of NAC was final in all respects and needed no review. The government should put the new accountability mechanism in place in a shortest possible time but sincerity of the main parliamentary parties sitting on both treasury and opposition benches was doubtful for obvious reasons, she concluded.