Daily Times

It has caused a political storm. How dare any institution have the gall to question a politician’s source of income, assets and dealings? First, it was the audacious Rangers and now the outrageous National Accountability Bureau (NAB). Beginning with the erratic attack by Altaf Hussain on being targeted by the Rangers and the fury of Asif Zardari against the army, to the tirade of Parvaiz Rashid and Ayaz Sadiq against NAB, the message is loud and clear: do not mess with the mess created by politicians. This may seem strange to any genuinely democratic country where accountability of politicians and public officials is the real cornerstone of the political system, but in Pakistan being a politician means having immunity from accountability. The Pakistani politicians’ stature of being holier than the law has made this sector a breeding ground of corruption.
Accountability is the missing link in most matters concerning politics. The usual modus of accountability is the one done by dictators on democrats. When General Ziaul Haq came into power he ensured a case against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, which resulted in his death sentence. Similarly, when Musharraf came to power he started a process of accountability that was compromised on the basis of some personal interests and external pressures. During the times of Benazir (and later Zardari) and Nawaz Sharif, accountability has been more of an election-winning slogan than any serious attempt to nail culprits. This friendly accountability was done under the guise of avoiding “political victimisation”. Thus, NAB was laughingly known as ‘Not Actually Bothered’ and dismissed as another institution created to provide space for cronies to look busy and do nothing on attractive salaries.
NAB was established in 1999 as Pakistan’s apex anti-corruption organization, assigned with the responsibility of elimination of corruption through a holistic approach of awareness, prevention and enforcement. However, the performance of this institution has been as questionable as the appointment of its head. The tradition used to be that the ruling government would appoint one of its loyalists as its head to protect the government and attack selectively those whom the government wanted to teach a lesson. The PPP appointed (retd) Admiral Fasih Bukhari as the NAB head. In the Rs 22 billion case of rental power on Raja Pervez Ashraf, Kamran Faisal was NAB’s chief investigator. While writing this report he was found dead in his room. He was alleged to have committed suicide but was later declared murdered by the Supreme Court (SC), but the case did not come to any conclusion because of lack of clinching evidence. In 2013, Chaudhry Nisar challenged the NAB chief’s position in the court on the grounds that the opposition was not consulted on this selection and thus Fasih Bukhari was asked to resign.
The PML-N appointed Qamaruz Zaman Chaudhry as the NAB chairman in October 2013. His appointment came under heavy criticism by other opposition parties due to his dubious credentials. He was an Aide-de-Camp (ADC) of Ziaul Haq, then a bureaucrat under various regimes and is a PML-N loyalist. On becoming the chairman his own case of six billion rupees in the National Insurance Company Limited (NICL) scam was under NAB investigation. Herein lies the comedy of errors: NAB officials who are reporting to him investigate him and exonerate him from this scam. Cases on Khursheed Shah and President Zardari are quickly put aside and friendly accountability process in this “conducive environment” starts all over again.
This saga of you-overlook-my cases-and-I-will-overlook-yours continued till a case filed by Manzoor Ahmed Ghauri against chairman NAB and other officials shook up the judiciary. The case, initiated earlier this year, pertains to scrutiny of the anti-corruption body. The SC ordered NAB to report on its performance and that has opened a Pandora’s box. Some 150 mega corruption cases have been brought to the court, amounting to an estimated Rs 425 billion of alleged corruption money. The names of the accused are in the who’s who list. All stalwarts of the PPP and all superstars of the PML-N figure in scandals to the most horrific level. For example, one of the enquiries being carried out against the incumbent Prime Minister (PM) and his brother in a case pertains to the construction of a road from Raiwind to the Sharif family house, worth Rs 126 million. A similar enquiry is under process against ex-premier Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain and another against the sitting finance minister, Ishaq Dar. He is under inquiry for three cases of Pounds 23 million, $ 3,488 million and $ 1,250 million respectively.
Some of the enquiries are 13 years old and have been successfully suppressed to fade away from public memory. Not only has NAB been excellent in pushing politicians’ dirt away but has also managed to use the strange rule of plea bargain to pardon offenders who have confessed to these horrible crimes. Plea bargain is a plea of the guilty: return of a certain amount in exchange for lesser punishment. Such a person is disqualified from holding public office and obtaining loan from a bank. This is not only terrible but is also criminal. Take the case of the Sharif loan default: how were the PM and Chief Minister (CM) able to contest the elections in 2013 being defaulters? Shahbaz Sharif has admitted that the Sharif family had settled Rs 5.22 billion by December 2014.
So, here it goes: cases are filed against corruption, they are sent to NAB, NAB’s officials themselves are under investigation, they are answerable to people against whom these cases are filed, they delay for decades, do plea bargains, exonerate all who are with their bosses and threaten to investigate those who are against their bosses. In the end, a win-win happy family scene occurs, where the NAB chief is investigated by his juniors in NAB and given a clean chit, and the political musical chairs resume taking turns at government. Thus, when NAB does not obey the orders of its bosses and obeys orders of the SC, all hell breaks loose.

The writer is secretary information PTI Punjab, an analyst, a columnist and can be reached at andleeb.abbas1@gmail.com