Director General of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ehtesab Commission Lieutenant General Mohammad Hamid Khan (Retd) has resigned delivering a damaging blow to the provincial government's credibility on the accountability issue. In his letter of resignation General Hamid cited recent amendments to the KPK Ehtesab Commission Act, 2014, saying "the accountability and autonomy of the commission does not exist after the changes." He listed several objections in support of his contention, all of which make ample sense except for the complaint that five members of the commission get to interfere in interpretation of the law which, according to him, dilutes the DG's powers. Making decisions on the basis of majority opinion rather than an individual's good sense surely is more democratic and less prone to errors of judgement.
But he has rightly pointed out that other changes undermine the principle of an independent and transparent accountability process. To begin with, following the 18th Amendment, the National Accountability Bureau's (NAB) jurisdiction was to be restricted to federal agencies, but that is not the case anymore with the result that disputes regularly arise between the two bodies. It makes little sense for both the federal and provincial accountability organisations to expend time and resource doing the same thing. That will only weaken the provincial commission's authority, and can lead to a sorry catalogue of delay and obfuscation. The new rule looks all the more ill-intentioned considering that the Anti-Corruption Establishment, originally planned to become part of the Ehtesab Commission, is to continue working as an independent entity. The changes, in fact, appear to have been made mainly to protect the powerful people. A particularly objectionable, rather scandalous, amendment provides that no inquiry will be launched on an 'anonymous' complaint. As General Hamid said in his resignation letter, under him the commission had arrested powerful ministers and senior bureaucrats on charges of corruption. Considering the involvement of such people in corruption, few would want to come forward to lodge open complaints against such influential personages. They can do so only at the risk of facing unbearable pressures, or losing jobs, even lives. The move puts paid to PTI Chairman Imran Khan's proud claims of credit for his party's government in KPK for putting in place a strong and independent provincial Ehtesab Commission which he never tired of saying, spares not even ministers.
That is not all. Under the new rules no legislator is to be arrested by the commission without prior intimation to the Senate Chairman or the Speaker of the National or provincial assembly, as the case may be. In a similar vein, the chief secretary will have to be informed before the arrest of a civil servant. The obvious purpose is either to give such a suspect time to escape or to have him/her get the action stopped through intervention from above, like an interloping NAB. The provision comes across as discriminatory, making a mockery of the rule of law. If the changes are the result of inadvertent mistakes the provincial government should have no hesitation to accept the objections the DG has raised. Otherwise it will lose the moral high ground it has been claiming to point the finger at the other provincial as well as federal governments for turning a blind eye to the bane of pervasive corruption in high places.
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