NAB employees welcome Bokhari’s appointment

The employees of the Accountability Bureau and Accountability Courts have welcomed the appointment of Admiral (r) Fasih Bokhari as chairman of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), calling him the “right man for the right job”, Pakistan Today has learnt.
The appointment has particularly brought joy to several NAB prosecutors whose contracts were expiring during the next two months, as a chairman was required to extend their contracts.
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has rejected Bokhari’s appointment and also indicated that it might challenge the appointment in the Supreme Court (SC), as the legal process required by the constitution was not followed. However, nobody in the entire NAB staff seemed to oppose Bokhari’s appointment. The employees consider him a competent head of the organisation and as someone who could act impartially without absorbing political pressure. The NAB chairman’s post had been lying vacant since the removal of Justice (r) Deedar Hussain Shah in March this year. Bokhari is the sixth chairman of NAB and a fifth one belonging to the armed forces.
Because of the chairman’s vacant office, the bureau had been almost dormant. It was unable to initiate inquiry on corruption cases or to issue arrest warrants.
It is expected that new references would be filed with NAB, including the ones that were trashed for not having the NAB chairman’s signature. Last year, NAB-Punjab had filed 44 new references and in 2011, the bureau has so far filed only thirteen references.
Former NAB prosecutor Adnan Shuja Butt while expressing his views on Bokhari’s appointment said the new chief had huge responsibility on his shoulders because of the crisis situation in the country. He said Bokhari should be impartial to lower Pakistan’s ranking on the list of most corrupt nations.