Warning that the forthcoming meeting of the National Standing Committee on Law and Justice would be the last chance for Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) to evolve a consensus on the Accountability Draft Bill, Standing Committee Chairperson Begum Nasim Chaudhry said on Sunday that the bill would be sent to the National Assembly (NA) with a dissenting note of the PML-N if differences continued to persist, adding that the committee meeting would be convened within a few days.
“I shall convene the last meeting on the issue of the Accountability Bill to develop a consensus and if an agreement is still not reached, the bill will be sent to the National Assembly with a dissenting note of the PML-N,” Nasim said, adding that further meetings would only be convened if consensus appeared to be emerging in the meeting. There has been a deadlock between the two major parties in parliament, the PPP and the PML-N, over three points of the Accountability Bill.
The PML-N has insisted that only a serving judge of the superior court should head the Accountability Commission and the bill should come into effect from 1947. The Nawaz-led party has also demanded that international cooperation should be sought if an absconder was living abroad and was guilty of corruption. The PPP has said that all three points were not practicable. Nasim said appointing a serving judge to head the Accountability Commission would be against the Judicial Policy.
“The Judicial Policy does not allow any judge of the superior court to head the Accountability Commission. All judges, appointed in different government departments in the past were sent back under the Judicial Policy and if any serving judge is allowed to head the Accountability Commission, it will be challenged,” Nasim said. She said the demand that the bill should come into effect from 1947 was not practicable.
“If corruption cases are initiated from 1947, it is not possible to produce evidences and the guilty before the court as neither the guilty nor the witnesses are alive now,” the chairperson said, adding that a specific and practicable timeframe should be proposed by the PML-N. Nasim said further that the PML-N wanted international cooperation without proving corruption charges, adding that “we want to base the need of international cooperation on evidence”.
She said international cooperation should not be sought unless there was evidence, adding that unproven allegations would lead to victimisation. “We do not want the Accountability Bill to be a ‘law of revenge’ which could be misused by agencies,” Nasim said. To this, PML-N MNA Zahid Hamid told Pakistan Today that it had been agreed in the Charter of Democracy that a serving judge would head the Accountability Commission.
“The government wants to add a clause that ‘any person qualified to be a judge of the Supreme Court’ can also head the commission and if we concede to this, transparency and independence of the commission will not be guaranteed,” Hamid said. He said further that only a serving judge could make a good judgment if an independent investigation agency existed under the commission.
