IN a welcome development, incumbent Chairman National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Lt. General (Rtd) Nazir Butt has reportedly decided to help heal the wounds of NAB victims by personally meeting them and tendering apologies over how the Bureau has been mistreating many, including politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen in the past in the name of accountability. He has already introduced new SOPs to protect bureaucrats and businessmen from NAB’s undue harassment and has plans to revise the Bureau’s SOPs to protect parliamentarians and other public officeholders from arbitrary arrest.
There can be no two opinions that NAB is an important national institution entrusted with the task of tackling the menace of rising corruption in the system, which has become one of the main concerns of the people of Pakistan. The country cannot achieve the goal of progress and prosperity until and unless the corrupt is held accountable in a transparent and across the board manner. However, it is lamentable that the NAB has been rendered highly controversial because the successive governments used it for witch-hunting and setting political scores. There have been numerous instances when prominent personalities especially politicians were arrested and put behind bars on corruption charges which could not be substantiated in courts. The victims were ultimately absolved of the false and motivated charges but in the process they suffered a lot because of character assassination as well as physical and mental sufferings. In this backdrop, the move of the Chairman NAB is appreciable and hopefully a foolproof system would be evolved to put a halt to the misuse of the accountability process. Apart from high profile cases, NAB should also concentrate on rampant corruption in public dealing institutions, which is more relevant to people.
