EDITORIAL: Hearing suo motu proceedings of the joke the accountability process seems to have become, a three-member bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed expressed dismay over the fact that more than 1,226 cases have been pending before 25 accountability courts, five of which are without a presiding judge. As noted by the court, new cases are being regularly filed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) while the number of courts remains stagnant. This has gone on despite the fact that as per the relevant law, the National Accountability Ordinance, all corruption cases are to be decided within 30 days.
Why the process of accountability has failed to have the intended effect is open to question. Since most of the cases were of a political nature the previous governments may not have wanted to push them. But the main plank of the present government has been fighting corruption in high places. Yet it has little to show for its efforts, except for earning criticism that it is out to malign its political rivals on trumped up charges. There are several high profile cases involving political personages in which the NAB filed references over a year ago, but is yet to indict them in courts. Regardless of the merit of any of these cases, the issue is not only that there are not enough courts and presiding officers, the anti-graft watchdog also lacks the professionalism both for properly investigating cases and pursuing them in accountability courts. Time and again, NAB prosecutors have embarrassed themselves and the bureau with their poor performance before courts. As aptly observed by the Chief Justice, "neither the investigation officers working with NAB are well trained to properly probe the corruption allegations nor the prosecutors are interested in pursuing the cases before the accountability courts."
The apex court has now directed the concerned authorities to immediately set up as many as 120 accountability courts across the country and appoint presiding officers for all of them, and ordered the NAB Prosecutor General to furnish a report, duly signed by his chairman, explaining how the bureau proposed to have the cases decided at the earliest. The law secretary has also been told that the government must fill all the five vacant posts of accountability judges within a week or face serious action. Furthermore that it must increase the strength of accountability courts within three months to ensure that all pending cases came to a logical conclusion. As for the vacant positions, appearing in a TV programme, Law Minister Farogh Naseem tried to shrug off the government's responsibility arguing that it could not do that on its own as the relevant high courts have the authority to name the candidates for the job. The intervention by the apex court should spur all concerned into action, expediting the appointments procedure for both the old and the new positions that are to come up in the new accountability courts. Meanwhile, the government needs to do what falls squarely on its shoulders, which is to provide NAB with necessary resources to improve the performance of its investigators and prosecutors.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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