Pakistan owes about US$ 35 billion to the international community. Has anyone wondered what would happen if, instead of constantly rescheduling Pakistan’s debt and injecting fresh loans into its coffers, the international community were to set up a body like NAB and empower it to hold Pakistan “accountable” for all its willful defaults? Or consider this. If the state of Pakistan is a most willful defaulter, the State Bank of Pakistan and the Central Board of Revenue are its right and left hand respectively. The former has willfully gobbled up billions of dollars in forex deposits belonging to Pakistanis while the latter owes at least Rs 30 billion in income and wealth tax refunds to the banking sector and tens of billions of rupees in rebates to domestic industry. But both have refused to cough up or make amends. Nor does the matter end here. State-owned corporations, including several belonging to the army’s “welfare” trusts, owe at least Rs 50 billion to the banks. Yet NAB has shown no particular inclination to haul them up and string them upside down.
We now understand that NAB will also tread ever so softly where accountability of the armed forces and judiciary is concerned. The justification for this approach apparently is that “both institutions have highly efficient and credible internal mechanisms for accountability” which obviate the necessity for NAB to step into any breach.
Unfortunately, this explanation doesn’t wash. With honourable exceptions, and present company excepted, many service chiefs in the past have not been able to shrug off perceptions of corruption or misdemeanour, whether from receipt of illegal kickbacks and commissions in major arms deals or through unjustified acquisition of state assets and privileges or through unauthorised receipts of payoffs in furtherance of unconstitutional political objectives. But not one service chief has ever been hauled up by the service concerned. The same applies to the judiciary whose reputation is no better than the civil and financial bureaucracy of the country. Yet the former couple will be allowed to go scot-free by NAB even as the latter are hauled over the coals.
We are all for “accountability”. Indeed, without accountability there can be no “true” democracy. But we are not sanguine about the nature and scope of accountability initiated by General Pervez Musharraf’s government, no matter how sincere and well-intentioned its motives.
There are at least five critical elements of any credible “Accountability”: (a) it should be a constitutionally viable process (b) which is institutional in nature, (c) even-handed in essence, (d) transparent in operation (e) and self-accountable in perception. How do the Accountability Ordinance and NAB fit this bill?
Rather badly, we fear. The draconian ordinance, which allows NAB to imprison alleged crooks for up to 90 days without provision of bail is likely to be struck down for violating fundamental constitutional rights. That will put paid to any claims which the law may confer to the actions of NAB in these troubled times. Nor, by definition, may any newly-created non-civilian organisation with such vast powers over civilians headed by a serving army general in extraordinary times claim any institutional longevity and legitimacy. Equally, the lack of any consistent, even-handed criteria in nabbing people is demonstrated both by the cavalier manner of selecting the first lot last month and the threats and arrests by NAB subsequently. Finally, there is no transparency in the selection or modus operandi of NAB’s investigating and prosecuting officers; nor is there any mechanism to hold NAB accountable for its own sins of omission and commission. After all, apart from General Amjad Hussain and an odd lieutenant or two whose personal integrity is beyond reproach, none of the other senior officers in NAB can be said to have irreproachable pasts or be beyond the pale of vested interests or personal prejudice. Indeed, not one of them has been “confirmed” in his or her arduous responsibility through a public scrutiny process which strips them bare before anointing them as public officials primus inter pares. That some of them worked for the notorious commission headed by Saifur Rehman has not disqualified them for the job. Nor are others sufficiently endowed with the professional expertise required, especially where complex financial and banking matters are concerned.
Let us make no bones about it. General Musharraf and his men in shining armour are no revolutionaries who stand apart from and above society. They are here for a short time and should cut their coat according to the cloth. They should put a few of the worst criminal offenders in each category in the power-bloc comprising soldiers, judges, politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, traders, bankers, landlords and press magnates—the “elites” to which General Pervez Musharraf referred—in prison as soon as possible and throw the key away. Then they should offer conditional amnesty and reconciliation to all the others in the melting pot so that we can start on a cleaner slate. The last thing General Musharraf needs is a state of confrontation between the head of NAB and the heads of various ministries who do not share his enthusiasm for “ruthless accountability”.