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EVERY few years, we in Pakistan hold a powerful individual or a group of individuals to account through extraordinary arrangements. The exercise provides an occasion to celebrate the illusion of ‘across-the-board accountability’. Has this episodic spurt, without improving the overall system of accountability improved the rule of law or the state of corruption in Pakistan?
The first constituent assembly passed the controversial Public and Representative Office (Disqualification) Act (Proda), 1949, that provided for trial of public office holders and disqualification from holding public office for up to 15 years.
In March 1959, the martial law administration of Gen Ayub Khan promulgated the Public Offices (Disqualification) Order patterned after the often misused Proda. Realising that Podo’s scope did not include legislators, the Elective Bodies (Disqualification) Order was promulgated in August 1959. The purpose of Ebdo clearly was a summary cleansing of the country’s political landscape of all those against whom even the slightest charge of misconduct could be investigated.
Until Dec 31, 1966, persons convicted under Ebdo were required to retire from public life and make good any loss to the national exchequer that their actions might have caused. Ebdo also provided for the possibility of voluntary retirement in which case the inquiry against the public official was to be dropped. Over 6,000 persons were hit by Ebdo, the majority of whom either opted to retire or were disqualified.
Accountability has a chequered history in Pakistan.
The stated purpose of all these accountability exercises was to “cleanse the body politic of the country of all sorts of corruption”. As the subsequent dismissal of the governments of Benazir Bhutto in 1990 and 1996 and of Nawaz Sharif in 1993 and 1999 and the charge sheets read out at the time of their ouster indicate, corruption remained as much a problem, if not amplified.
When former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was being tried for murder charges in the courts in 1978-79, a section of society believed and proclaimed that accountability of such a powerful politician would set an example and, as a result, nobody would dare flout the rule of law. No one can claim that his subsequent execution, now largely regarded as a mistake, led to the strengthening of rule of law. The rule of law, instead, weakened over a period of time.
The nation felt that the dream of a just and corruption-free society was about to be realised when Iftikhar Chaudhry, the former chief justice of Pakistan, after his restoration in 2009, started taking an unprecedented number of suo motu actions under Article 184/3 of the Constitution. Public officials around the country were either summoned to Court Room No. 1 or the human rights cell established in the Supreme Court under the supervision of the chief justice tried to dispense good governance through its calls for explanations. There is no evidence that the quality of governance improved or corruption decreased by any margin at the end of Iftikhar Chaudhry’s term.
The trial and disqualification of Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani as prime minister in 2012 is another episode a section of our society pinned hopes on for a corruption-free Pakistan. Some people felt that the trial and dismissal of a sitting prime minister would set such a powerful example that no elected leader would ever dare commit an irregularity or stand in the way of an anti-corruption drive. Mr Gilani was sent packing but no example was set. Even his successor, former prime minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, was accused of corruption and continues to face court cases.
One may also look at the repeated efforts to carry out a purge of public servants in a vain attempt to cleanse bureaucracy of corruption. Some 84 top civil servants were sacked summarily by Gen Ayub Khan soon after he took over the government as chief martial law administrator in 1958. Gen Yahya Khan sacked 303 civil servants when he assumed power as chief martial law administrator in 1969. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took advantage of his vast powers as civilian chief martial law administrator by not only sacking around 1,300 public servants but also withdrawing many protections that they had against arbitrary dismissal. All these summary dismissals were presented as well-intentioned acts of accountability which would herald the era of clean government. Nothing of the sort happened.
Emotions are running extremely high at the moment after the disqualification of Nawaz Sharif as prime minister by the Supreme Court that used its powers under Article 184/3 of the Constitution. Irrespective of the merits of the case, the chequered history of accountability in Pakistan indicates that this event in itself will not herald an era of public integrity and rule of law unless a system of accountability is nourished and strengthened to a point that it may detect, investigate, prosecute and secure conviction of culprits as a matter of routine.
One also needs to understand that systems don’t take root overnight; they reform and gain strength over time. Pakistan has a reasonably good legal framework of accountability in the form of the National Accountability Ordinance but its limited scope does not extend to all segments of public office holders.
NAO improved after the amendment making the appointment of the National Accountability Bureau chairman contingent upon the bipartisan consensus of the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. There is certainly a lot of room for further improvement. Sadly, NAB, after its formative years, was used by Gen Musharraf’s government to advance its political agenda. Its apparent inaction on the Panama scandal together with the fact that it was publicly rebuked by some of the honourable judges has damaged the reputation of this national institution.
This is a time of turmoil but also a time of serious reflection to transform NAB into an effective institution impervious to all political influences with its scope extending to all categories of public office holders in the three branches of government — and not just civil servants and elected officials.
The writer is president of Pildat.
Twitter: @ABMPildat.
Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2017
