ISLAMABAD - Parliamentary Committee on Accountability Laws further slipped into disagreement and confusion when besides failure to bring all the departments including superior judiciary and the armed forces into its ambit, stark differences among the members surfaced on the preparation of references and trial mechanism.
A three-member sub-committee was formed to iron out differences on the formation of references and its trial mechanism, which would furnish its report in the next meeting of the committee.
On the proposal to extend the scope and implementation of the new accountability laws to all the four provinces, the Sindh Government came up with strong opposition to it and proposed that the application of new laws should be restricted to the federal government employees in the province.
After seeing the strong opposition to the point of bringing superior judiciary and the armed forces in the ambit of new accountability laws, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) members abstained from the committee meeting on Tuesday ostensibly to record their concern over the issue.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), though supported the government point of view of not to bring the superior judiciary and the armed forces in the ambit of the new laws, but raised serious concerns over the proposed draft bill and suggested that the 1999 National Accountability Bureau Ordinance should be amended and retained to have strong and across the board accountability of all.
Talking to media after the meeting, chairman of the committee Zahid Hamid termed the boycott of the PPP members of the committee out of place adding that the members of the committee had deliberated upon each and every point, and all issues were settled with consensus and their staying out at the final stage of passing the draft bill was unreasonable.
He further said that the agreement on formation of new Ehtesab Commission was also made with consensus and now the PTI had backed out form it and wanted to keep the 1999 NAB Ordinance intact with a few amendments in it.
Hamid further informed that the PTI had also changed its representation in the committee and replaced Shah Mahmood Qureshi with Shireen Mazari.
To a question, Zahid Hamid said that they did not totally revoke 1999 NAB Ordinance, and each and every clause of the ordinance was examined and amendments were introduced where required and that too with consensus.
He said that a three-member sub-committee comprising Anusha Rehman, SA Iqbal and Mohsin Ranjha was formed to address the concerns of the committee members on framing of the reference and its trial mechanism.
Meanwhile, the PTI through a letter separately submitted its objections to the proposed National Accountability Commission Bill 2017 to the committee.
The bill “does not introduce a single measure of reform that would improve the current accountability process or bring corrupt elements to task,” the PTI’s chief whip in the National Assembly, Shireen Mazari, said in a letter submitted on behalf of her party. The letter also objected to the lack of a timeframe for the applicability of the proposed law.
It also termed the creation of a separate agency for prosecuting accountability cases “illusory and illogical”, as the proposed commission will still overlook the agency and the move will not improve prosecution in corruption cases.
The PTI also questioned the retention of the “voluntary return” clause and the proposed provision to reduce the punishment for an offender from a maximum of 14 to a minimum of seven years if the illegal gain is fully recovered.
Under Section 25 of the National Accountability Ordinance, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman, with the approval of any accountability court, can order the release of an accused found guilty of corruption after he/she enters into a plea bargain or an agreement by returning the misappropriated money to the bureau.
The party also objected to a proposed provision that will give the right to bail to an accused who has been in custody for more than a year without their trial being concluded. “Considering the fact that it is extremely unlikely for any NAB trial to conclude within a year, this provision will ensure that every person accused of corruption is released on bail,” the letter read.
The proposal of acquitting a person whose case could not be settled within 10 years time was also questioned by the PTI, which claims: “a person who may clearly be guilty of looting public money and abuse of power can go free as a result of delay in his trial” because of the provision.
It also objected to the retention of the powers of pardon granted to the proposed commission and raised other technical and operational issues.