- Senate Deputy Chairman’s strictures echo Supreme Court judgment
Senate Deputy Chairman Saleem Mandviwala’s threat to approach the European Union, and other international organizations, against the iniquiries of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), reflect the intensity of his frustration at NAB’s obstinate defiance of the Senate. He was moved to make this unusual threat after a visit to the family of Brig (retd) Asad Munir, who had committed suicide in March 2019 while facing numerous enquiries by NAB, but before he was arrested. Mr Mandviwala himself is under investigation by NAB. He said, while speaking to the press after condoling with the family, that there had been numerous suicides of NAB detenus.
Among other things, as Mr Mandviwala said, NAB humiliated suspects, causing some of them to commit suicide. He said that he would take NAB to the EU for violating human rights. Mr Mandviwala is not an aberration caused by his own case. He has said nothing the Supreme Court has not in giving opposition leader Saad Rafique bail in a NAB case, when it passed strictures on NAB and its methods. Apart from issues of competence caused by lack of capacity, there is also the issue of political interference, which makes it necessary to reform NAB at the very fundamental level of amendments in the NAB law, insulating it from the political pressures upon it to be used as a means of hounding the regime’s political opponents.
NAB, under the present government, has developed an unfortunate reputation as the main tool the government has for persecuting opposition figures. Mr Mandviwala’s threat is on the surface a case of washing dirty linen in public. However, if the government does not reform NAB, there is the danger that those who it does not drive to ending it all, will try to seek relief wherever they can find it. If they do not find it at home, they might well go abroad. If the strictures of the Supreme Court have failed to make the government carry out the necessary reforms, the government should not blame anyone for taking what seem to be extreme measures.
