The failure of the Chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to appear before the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) cannot be brushed over, for it seems to be creating a pattern involving the Prime Minister. The PAC has been avoided before by a senior official, the Chairman NAB, who bluntly wrote that the Prime Minister had forbidden him from appearing before any parliamentary committee. He later withdrew that. But the damage had been done. The assumption that mentioning the PM would be enough to get officials is not easily understood. Indeed, it is not possible to contemplate the possibility of avoiding a summons by a parliamentary committee. However, the Committee’s failure to take any action against the NAB Chairman probably contributed to the cavalier spirit in which the FBR Chairman asked the PAC Chairman over the phone to be excused because he had to go to the PM Secretariat. At the time of the committee meeting, the PM was addressing an awards distribution function. The Chairman FBR was very obviously not in a meeting with him.
The failure of the PAC to take action might have something to do with its having a government majority, and indeed the PAC is so important that it is the only parliamentary committee mentioned in the Constitution, and which supervises the work of the Auditor General of Pakistan. It is interesting that the PTI, whose leader has decried the failure to build institutions, has instead worked to denigrate institutions, and has taken steps which make government officials feel that Parliament can be ignored with impunity.
It is perhaps too much of a coincidence that both NAB and the FBR have been used against Justice Qazi Faez Isa. Is there a disinclination by the Prime Minister to let this interfere in the way civil servants are allowed to deal with Parliament, with the PAC supervised by a Parliamentary committee. Its free functioning is embarrassing to government if it has something to hide. What is the PM trying to hide?
