ISLAMABAD: Chief Jus­tice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial on Wednesday obser­ved that holding the entire cabinet or committee members responsible for taking collective decisions would retard the decision-making process in the country.

“If we start chasing members of a committee then people will stop making decisions and everything will be referred for final approval to parliament,” the CJP observed, adding that media reports suggested that many decisions had been sent down the same route for approval.

The country’s top judge made these remarks as part of a three-member Supreme Court bench hearing a challenge by PTI chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan to the August 2022 amendments to the NAB law.

The observation came when senior counsel Kha­w­aja Haris Ahmed, representing the PTI, argued that public office-holders wanted a clean chit and recent amendments to the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) had been introduced only for the benefit of the holders of public office who were in power today.

Through the amendments, the holders of public office had taken institutions like the federal or provincial cabinets, Council of Common Interests, National Finance Commission, National Economic Council, Central Development Working Party, boards of directors or boards of trustees of statutory bodies, State Bank of Pakistan etc out of NAB’s ambit.

Though these bodies deal with policymaking, the CDWP or provincial bodies approve development projects worth billions and therefore should be made subject to NAB laws.

When billions have been spent in the investigation of white-collar crime by NAB, then what was the wisdom behind wasting money especially when hundreds of corruption cases were being returned to NAB by the accountability courts after the amendments.

This is being done in completely mala fide manner contrary to what the Constitution mandates for strong accountability of the government. But those in power have made the accountability process a toothless law, argued the counsel.

He also highlighted the negative impact of amending and diluting the accountability law against the backdrop of international commitments, especially when Pakistan was a signatory to the United Nations Convention against Corruption which demands making stringent laws for discouraging illicit enrichment through abuse of authority.

The counsel, however, conceded that it was wrong to arrest the accused facing corruption charges or abuse of power and put them in jail. Arrest of the accused should be an exception and it was totally unfair to first nab the accused and then commence investigations against them.

CJP observed that the entire cabinet members who made a collective decision could not be made accused for wrong decisions. But the counsel emphasised that they should be dealt with in accordance with the law if they were guilty of making decisions detrimental to the sovereignty of Pakistan or bringing economic misery to the people.

Citing the example of LNG contract from Qatar, CJP emphasised that without having complete knowledge about the actual facts of the contract, especially when such deals were done at the state level, we point fingers against people involved in it over situations beyond their control, while also emphasising that a number of bureaucrats had to face trial for such accusations and eventually got acquitted in the end though they had to suffer jail terms.

Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah wondered whether the petitioner would still have challenged the amendments in the NAB law had this come in 1999, a period when former president General Pervez Musharraf had introduced the law.

But when the counsel argued that he would still have challenged the law since it was meant to benefit a particular class of persons, Justice Shah said he had noted that the petitioner would not have challenged NAB law if it had come in 1999.

The flexibility of the legislators to change any law was a political question for which parliament needs to worry about in determining what mistake it had committed in bringing changes to the law, Justice Shah observed.

Essentially, Justice Ijaz-ul-Ahsan observed, he saw amendments in NAB law as colourable exercise of authority to open up the way to systematic corruption adding that when the law, instead of being strengthened, attempts to clear a way in favour of those who gain ostensible monetary benefits then it was a colourable exercise of jurisdiction.

The hearing was postponed till Oct 18.

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2022