Senator Saifur Rehman’s accountability cell aims to satiate the public’s hunger for ehtesaab. This is most welcome. Senator Rahman is backed by the law advisor, Mr Khalid Anwar, and beefed up by a keen group of police officers, lawyers and bureaucrats who are doing much of the investigative groundwork.
There are, however, a number of pitfalls ahead. If the youthful Senator doesn’t watch out for them, the whole process of accountability could become highly controversial. In the event, it might derail the Senator and discredit the Nawaz Sharif government.
1. The hands of all people associated with the Ehtesaab process should be completely clean. Nothing undermines the legitimacy of Ehtesaab as controversy over the bonafides of the people leading it. Senator Saif ur Rahman, in particular, should be very careful. He is bound to make more enemies than friends at the end of the day. While his friends will never tire of nit-picking his modus operandi, his enemies may be expected to feed the press all sorts of disparaging stories about him. He must therefore disassociate himself from all business and financial dealings while in government. He must firmly orders members of his family to stay clear of all potential government contracts and foreign dealerships. And he must consistently and firmly reject all sifarshis, especially from among the Muslim League and its alliance partners, who are lining up outside his door. One slip and he will go down like a ton of bricks, taking Ehtesaab with him.
2. Even though the Ehtesaab Ordinance has been amended to cover public servants of Grade 18 and above, it would be a mistake for the Senator to cast his net too far and dissipate the limited resources at its command. Far better to concentrate on the notorious crocodiles, establish foolproof cases against them and get quick convictions than to be tempted into the labyrinthe of petty, everyday corruptions.
3. Accountability should be even-handed, equitable and just. If the top bureaucracy is being targetted, why isn’t the Senator aiming his sights at the top politicians who were in cahoots with them? And if a number of PPP politicians are fated to be casualties, why isn’t he going for those from the PML, MQM and ANP who plundered the country from 1990 to 1993?
4. The political passion for quick accountability should not clash with the judiciary’s quest for greater independence and freedom from the executive. Indeed, if the writ jurisdiction of the courts to grant bail to the accused is sought to be curtailed in the interests of ehtesaab, it should be done only after taking the judiciary into full confidence. It would be tragic if the executive and the judiciary were to clash over this issue.
5. The hands of the Chief Ehtesaab Commissioner need to be considerably strengthened. Justice M Mirza desperately needs more funds. He also needs to hire experts from the private sector to assist him in the difficult task of investigating and prosecuting white-collar crime — lawyers, auditors, accountants, investigators and prosecutors. In short, the status of the CEC should be upgraded and made independent of government as soon as possible.
6. The FIA’s problems also require a sympathetic hearing. Thanks to political misuse by politicians in the past, the organisation is rife with corruption. DG-FIA Khawar Zaman should therefore be given a clean chit to dust out the organisation and root out bad elements. No political pressure should be brought upon him to victimise some people and let others off the hook.
7. The services of international forensic accountants should be hired to track down illegal bank balances and assets held abroad by Pakistanis. The caretaker government, which initiated this project, has left behind a comprehensive brief on this subject. The contract should be signed promptly — after all, an estimated US$ 20 billion is at stake.
8. The ECL should formally be made public. Only those people should be put on it against whom concrete investigations, which can be defended in a court of law, are in progress. Everybody else should be taken off it. Every new addition to it should be made public, along with solid reasons for doing so. The ECL should therefore be a lean and mean list. It should be a confidence-building measure pointing to the transparency of the Ehtesaab process rather than a dubious act of harassment or victimisation.
9. Ehtesaab should be viewed as an on-going process rather than a quick-fix gimmick. Cases should be prepared meticulously and defended vigourously. Because the existing prosecution machinery of the state is weak, criminal and corporate lawyers of repute should be hired at private sector salaries to prosecute the corrupt.
10. The Ehtesaab Ordinance should be made into an act of Parliament immediately.
Admittedly, this is a tall order. But it is exactly what the public wants and the country needs. The caretakers were discredited because they didn’t come up to expectations. If the PML government is also revealed to lack the will to pursue this agenda cleanly and transparently, it may expect to meet the same fate.
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