Islamabad: Expressing disappointment over the present accountability system, Pakistan Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani has suggested formation of an independent and powerful commission to carry out accountability in a judicious and transparent manner, saying that any attempt to amend the existing system in patchworks will not serve the purpose.
Rabbani suggested that all the existing institutions, including the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), should be made answerable to a proposed 12-member “federal commission for accountability”.
The Senate chairman made the suggestion in a six-page “open letter in the name of the public”, which was released to the media yesterday.
“I am using this tool of communication, which is not very common, due to the constraints of my constitutional office,” Rabbani said in the letter, adding that “this has been necessitated as the current system has failed to curb the menace of corruption and threatens democratic polity and harmonisation of our society”. The proposed commission, according to Raza Rabbani, should have enough powers to make every citizen accountable, including those belonging to the judiciary and the armed forces. “Creation of a statutory and independent body to oversee all aspects of corruption, with no group or entity outside its ambit, is need of the hour,” he wrote. The creation of such an entity would also mean that the overlap in mandates of several agencies could be rationalised.
The proposal from the Senate chairman has come just a few days after the NAB’s recent controversial decision of giving a clean chit to a Balochistan bureaucrat after striking a plea bargain deal with him. The decision received widespread criticism and even Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said the bureau’s chief should be from the judiciary.
The commission’s chairman, to be elected by the members, will have a three-year term.
“There shall be a bar on members of parliament and members of the armed forces becoming the chairman of the commission,” Rabbani suggested.
The Senate chairman said the present forums for disciplinary action and other related matters for persons belonging to the judiciary, the armed forces and bureaucracy would stay even after formation of the federal commission for accountability (FCA). Cases approved for reference as well as closure of investigation by NAB shall be placed before the FCA for a final decision.
