The key amendments in the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) made by the present government in December last to inculcate confidence in bureaucrats to freely take decisions instead of sitting on files will run out on April 24 with the parliament’s session not being in sight for their approval.
These amendments had taken out of the domain of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) the decisions taken by bureaucrats and public officeholders that entailed no monetary gain, swelling their assets disproportionate to their known sources of income.
The ordinance provided that no action will be taken against them unless it is shown that they materially benefited by gaining any asset or monetary benefit which is inconsistent with their known sources of income and that there is evidence to corroborate such material benefit.
The repeated emphasis in the amendments on this fact was intended to make it mandatory for NAB not to touch officials and public officeholders, who have not got any monetary benefit from their actions performed in their official duty.
Another key feature of the changes was that trials pertaining to federal or provincial taxation, levies or imports stand transferred from the accountability courts to the criminal courts, which deal with offences under the respective laws relating to these matters.
Prime Minister Imran Khan decided to promulgate this ordinance after several complaints that the bureaucracy has become dysfunctional due to the fear of the NAB. He expressed the view after issuing the ordinance that the officials would be free to take decisions for which they would not be asked questions by anybody.
Since neither the National Assembly nor the Senate can be or has been summoned due to the COVID-19 pandemic, these amendments are lying unattended. The rules do not provide for the parliamentary sessions through video-conferencing, as floated by some MPs.
To have the video-conferencing mode in place, Speaker Asad Qaisar has formed a nine-member bipartisan committee to amend the rules for virtual sessions during prevalence of the coronavirus.
Former speaker and senior Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, whose names figures in the body, told The News when contacted that the opposition has no hesitation to change the rules so that the National Assembly is enabled to transact its normal business. Despite a kind of urgency, the committee has not so far been convened, he said.
He said that a way could be found to hold the session even without amending the rules – a certain number of members of both the government and opposition can be asked to attend the sittings at one time by maintaining a wide distance in the debating hall and others can be allowed to do so at another time. Ayaz Sadiq said as speaker he had got installed hand sanitizers inside the corridors and lobbies and outside of the offices in the Parliament building in 2017. The incumbent speaker is beefing up the system.
The major opposition parties are unlikely to oppose the approval of the present amendments in the NAB law although they say that their key under-trial leaders have not taken any advantage of it.
The NAB ordinance that is going to lapse after nine days on the expiry of its 120-day constitutional life has not thus far benefited the public officeholders or bureaucrats being tried for irregularities. Only former prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf was acquitted by a Lahore accountability court in February in a reference about illegal recruitment in Gujrajanwala power electric company while an Islamabad court denied similar relief to him and others in the Rental Power Projects case under the new amendments. More than 100 accused arraigned by the NAB for having committed irregularities have approached the accountability courts. The NAB continues to oppose their acquittal pleas
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