- What about priorities?
Strangely, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has suddenly decided not to arrest election contestants till after July 25. Cases of former foreign minister Khwaja Asif, former minister of state for finance Rana Muhammad Afzal, Punjab minister Rana Mashood and former MNA Rai Mansab Ali Khan, therefore, have been put aside, for the moment, and they can campaign to their hearts’ content. Considering how the Bureau had been hyper-active for some time now, amid accusations that its guns are always pointed in the same direction, it seems its Executive Board finally felt compelled to deflect public blame, which had been mounting in direct proportion with expansion of its own activities.
PTI, the main beneficiary of ‘NAB on steroids’, is understandably livid. It has indirectly gained strength all the while the judiciary and then the accountability bureau have been hounding the Sharifs as well as their loyalists. Even though NAB repeatedly professes no political affiliations, etc, its recent track record clearly reflects more attention to PML-N and its concerns than the rest of the roster. And, at a time when the anti-corruption drive is all the rage, and rightly so, any political bias in the undertakings of the Bureau will have very far reaching consequences.
Clearly any official body in charge of checking corruption in Pakistan, in the present environment, will have its work cut out for it. Yet it is also important that any integrated effort against official corruption be completely transparent and visibly across-the-board. NAB, unfortunately, has put itself in a position where it now has to take such steps, like taking the foot off the gas till the election, to prove its hands are not dirty. There is, at the risk of repetition, an urgent need for the accountability process to be completely detached from any official or political control. Otherwise we will simply continue to go round in circles, as we have through much of our history.
