Accountability laws from which the National Accountability Bureau, commonly known as NAB was formed, have been controversial since day one. The reason is that it was founded when the country was ruled by an unelected military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf.
Terms and words like accountability, corruption, thieves and robbers are not new in Pakistani society. These things and the accusations and cases of corruption, theft of the national treasury and embezzlement were there even when the institution of NAB did not even exist. The same practice was going on at that time, which the nation is currently witnessing. Politicians would accuse each other, if they came to the government, they would set up corruption cases to neutralize opponents. The same stupidity that was before is still there. Even now there is similar litigation against each other which was the attitude of the politicians earlier.
The nation has been seeing for years that whoever gets hold of power, is concerned about two things first, the cases of corruption, terrorism, and rebellion and treason against his opponents and second, about themselves and those around them.
As far as the institution of NAB is concerned, it has been controversial from the first day of its establishment because the circumstances and background in which it was formed were enough to make it controversial. Politicians believe that accountability has always been used as a weapon against them by “powerful forces”. This is not so unrealistic because nothing has come out of this process of accountability so far. Politicians were kept in jails even for eleven years, but the nation has not heard any news about the recovery of the “looted assets”, on the basis of which the politicians were kept in jails.
NAB should be abolished or not, there can be two opinions but there is no room for any other opinion that accountability is necessary and also that accountability should be transparent, untainted, non-controversial and impartial and automatic.
This question is also important whether the nation has benefited more in terms of accountability from NAB or has suffered. There are questions about NAB and its performance. Regardless of how many amendments in the NAB laws are actually needed, it would have been better if the government had not acted hastily in this regard, should have supported all the stakeholders, especially the opposition, openly and kept the matter open in the people’s court. Accountability is the need of the whole nation, the more transparent, blunt, automatic and free from human intervention its institutions, laws and processes are, the better and uncontroversial they will be in favor of the nation.
Not only do the politicians have objections and questions on the role of NAB, the courts have also been raising concrete questions on its performance on various occasions, the answers of which are still owed to the original handlers of NAB.
