The government’s use of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to persecute opposition leaders has run into criticism by its own leaders, reflecting that the policy of misusing it is not so free of harm as might have been thought in certain circles. SAPM Tabish Gauhar’s claim that the shortage of gas countrywide was linked to NAB’s investigation of the LPG reference against former PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, has been hotly denied by NAB. However, in testimony to the Senate Standing Committee on Petroleum, Petroleum Secretary Dr Arshad Mehmood said that NAB had taken away officials’ ability to take decisions, and was a hurdle in the way of them adopting out-of-box solutions.
PTI had propounded the thesis that corruption caused losses; but now there is a scenario developing of its anti-corruption efforts resulting in economic loss. The pursuit of the opposition was wrong from the point of view of fairness and morality, not to mention the law and the Constitution, which is why opposition stalwarts have been getting bail from the courts. The government, which has all along expressed its concern for public money, should realize that its efforts to go after those who criticize it, need to be reconsidered. The government never tires of proclaiming NAB’s independence. That show of independence should not extend to harming the country.
If Prime Minister Imran Khan succeeds in getting the opposition to join him in electoral reform, he would do well to build on that (if at all it happens) to go for a revision of the NAB Ordinance. That the NAB law needs reform gains even more urgency considering the voices against it are rising within the government, and if the government were to engage with the opposition on this crucial issue, the country as a whole will benefit. The criticism may seem limited to the Petroleum Division, but that may well be because it has found itself the victim of a crisis that, in the opinion of its leading lights, could probably have been avoided had NAB not been pursuing narrow institutional interests, instead of wider national ones.
