Daily Times

The two major political parties which are now in the opposition and had ruled successively one after the other must be repenting their costly omission not to amend the NAB Ordinance. Perhaps this omission was deliberate because the leadership of PPP and PML-N wanted to keep the present all-powerful NAB law handy to use against their opponents. They had not envisaged that it would be used against them by the Imran Khan government which champions itself as the master cleaner of corruption.

NAB was created by [former president] General (Retd) Pervez Musharraf in November, 1999 to blackmail the politicians. He effectively used it to create the Kings Party and carve out the PML-Q from the PML-N and the patriots group from the PPP. Since its purpose was devious and not actually to stub out corruption from the political parties, the onus of proving themselves as innocent was kept in the NAB law on the accused instead of the internationally accepted principle that a person is innocent unless proven otherwise.

Instead of calling accused persons for having assets beyond their known source of income, NAB can also arbitrarily decide to arrest the accused. According to section 9(a)(v) of the NAB Ordinance, “A holder of a public office, or any other person, is said to commit or to have committed the offence of corruption and corrupt practices if he or any of his dependents or benamidar owns, possesses, or has [acquired] right or title in any [“assets or holds irrevocable power of attorney in respect of any assets] or pecuniary resources disproportionate to his known sources of income, which he cannot [reasonably] account for [or maintains a standard of living beyond that which is commensurate with his sources of income].”

It is not the first time that specific laws were created in Pakistan for the politicians’ corruption in the name of weeding out politicians who are corrupt. As early as 1949, two years after the inception of the country, Liaquat Ali Khan introduced a law against public officers to curb corruption.

Liaquat Ali Khan, who was known for his honesty, had a low opinion about his own colleagues which was shown by the fact that he promulgated the Public and Representative Office Disqualification Act (PRODA) in 1949. Under this Act, politicians could be disqualified by the tribunals set for this purpose for 10 years for offences such as, nepotism, bribery and corruption. Charges could be initiated against ministers and assembly members by the governor-general and provincial governors. In addition to this, an ordinary citizen could also file a complaint if they could afford the Rs5,000 security.

All military dictators claimed that they were going to wipe out the corruption which had slowed down the economic growth. Not only did the anti-corruption acts fall on the politicians, but it was also used against the civil servants who they thought would not cooperate with the military government.

After the constitution was abrogated, Ayub Khan dismissed the central and provincial cabinets, dissolved the assemblies and outlawed political parties.

Over 150 cabinet members and 600 former assembly members were indicted for corruption. This included Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy and Firoz Khan Noon. As many as 1,662 public officials were also dismissed or were forced to take early retirement as a result of inquiries initiated against civil servants.

Ayub Khan promulgated the Elective Bodies (Disqualification) Order (EBDO) in March, 1959 under which those suspected of improper behaviour or corruption had the choice of either going on trial or retiring from politics. Those found guilty were banned from public office till December, 1966. Important political figures such as Mian Mumtaz Daultana and MA Khuro also became victims of EBDO.

Gen Yahya Khan sacked 303 civil servants when he assumed power as chief martial law administrator in 1969. According to an article written by PILDAT President Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took advantage of his vast powers as civilian chief martial law administrator by not only sacking around 1,300 public servants but also withdrawing many protections that they had against arbitrary dismissal. The article published in Dawn and a number of political historians on Pakistan also criticised the sacking of senior civil servants by Bhutto.

Within 18 months of their rule, in the 1990s, Benazir’s PPP government was sacked by Ghulam Ishaq Khan with the full backing of the military. Many cases were instituted against Mr Asif Ali Zardari, who was the spouse of Benazir Bhutto. Around 32 months later, the same GIK had to swear in Mr Zardari in the interim government as a minister as PPP’s nominee, licking back all the allegations levied against him.

I have personally experienced how the intelligence used to plant stories in those days against Mr Zardari. Not only that, but the intelligence cobbled an alliance – the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad – of rightist parties to defeat PPP in the 1990 elections. The story of the intelligence funding the alliance against PPP was fully exposed when Azhar Khan filed a case against General Asad Durrani and army chief Aslam Beg. Although the Supreme Court, after much delay, ruled against both these gentlemen, no action was taken against them as they pleaded they did everything on the behest of their supreme commander and president, Ghulam Ishaq Khan. The newly-inducted government of Nawaz Sharif was only tolerated by the establishment for around 32 months. Although he got himself reinstated from the Supreme Court, he was pressurised by General Kakar and his colleagues to resign.

I am not questioning whether the charges against Zardari were true or not, but my point is that we have seen with a change of government each time that there has been a lot of political engineering done by the intelligence to get the desired election results. All the claims and actions taken in the name of weeding out corruption have failed to damage the corruption mafia in Pakistan much because the corruption laws are used to engineer the elections results and install a government of their choice. This time around, they have brought a new government which they think they can keep a control on.

The writer is the author of What’s wrong with Pakistan?