Chairman ARD and vice-chairman Pakistan Peoples Party Makhdoom Amin Faheem has welcomed the remarks of Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain that the accountability should be done only by the judiciary and not by any other body.
"The Pakistan Peoples Party welcomes the remarks of the prime minister and strongly urges him to follow up on his observations and restore some semblance of credibility to the process of accountability," said Faheem in a statement on Sunday.
He said that that it had been the consistent stand of the PPP that for any accountability process to be effective and credible it must be across the board and conducted through a judicial mechanism.
He said at present accountability was conducted through an organ of the executive and the National Accountability Bureau had reduced itself to serving as a political arm of the regime to hunt and hound only political opponents.
He said: "Every one knows how accountability under General Musharraf was used to break mainstream political parties, punish the political opponents in the name of accountability and reward the real corrupt by not pursuing cases against them if they joined the regime."
He said in January last the NAB admitted on the floor of the Senate that three sitting ministers were involved in corruption but the NAB did not proceed against them. "This is happening because the executive and not the judiciary conduct accountability," he said.
Makhdoom Amin Faheem said: "Contrary to the promise of 'across the board, horizontal and vertical accountability' by General Pervez Musharraf on the eve of the coup in October 1999, the generals and judges had been excluded from its ambit making a farce and mockery of the accountability."
"How can the accountability be called fair and across the board when generals involved in huge kickbacks and commissions in mega defence purchases are kept out of its ambit," he asked?
Makhdoom Amin said that the prime minister would find the PPP supporting him if he mustered the courage to bring the accountability process under the preview of the judiciary.