Mr Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal’s controversial tenure as chairman of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) came to an end on Thursday. Mr Justice (retd) Iqbal was appointed as the NAB chairman for four years during the tenure of the previous PML(N) government. In October last year, his tenure was extended for six months by the PTI government. The NAB Chairman was widely criticized for misusing his power of arrest. Besides politicians he also went after civil servants and businessmen who too were subjected to harassment.
Pakistan has a fairly long history of accountability laws mainly targeting politicians beginning with PRODA enforced in 1949. Ten years later, it was followed by Ayub Khan’s PODO and EBDO. The purpose behind these laws was to punish politicians who happened to be on be on the wrong side of the government or the establishment.
Notorious as these laws were, NAB attracted much more criticism than most of its predecessors. The NAB law gave too much power to its functionaries who used them with abandon. Fear of media trial and prolonged interrogation led Brigadier (retd) Asad Munir and Controller General of Accounts (CGA) Khurram Humayun to commit suicide The former was acquitted three years after his death. Later, courts set free several political leaders who had been arrested arbitrarily. While bailing out two PML(N) leaders a Supreme Court judge remarked these laws were being used as a tool to ‘arm-twist and pressurise’ political opponents into submission and ‘fracturing political parties’. NAB, which was avowedly created “to put the fear of God in the corrupt”, turned into a symbol of tyranny
The Parliament has passed amendments to NAB law to address major grievances. Federal and provincial tax matters and regulatory bodies’ decisions have been removed from NAB’s purview; Draconian provisions have been modified; cases will henceforth be decided within a year; NAB has been bound to ensure availability of evidence prior to arrest; an arrested person will have to be produced before an accountability court within 24 hours; the period of remand would also be reduced from 90 days to 14 days and If convicted, a person would be able to file an appeal till 30 days instead of 10 days previously
The amended law will remove some of the serious grievances. It remains to be seen however if it can deal with white collar crime more successfully.
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