Parliamentary Committee on National Accountability Law on Wednesday unanimously agreed that members of military and judiciary will not be held accountable under the new proposed accountability law. A meeting of the committee was held here under the chair of Minister for Law and Justice Zahid Hamid at the Parliament House.
The new legislation proposes that all existing inquiries and petitions will be transferred to the National Accountability Commission (NAC) or the new courts, and will not be terminated, the law minister said. The parliamentarians wanted a new law to hold people accountable across the board, but Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is against formation of the NAC, he said.
The minister said that amendments proposed in the law by the PTI show that it is against the name of the new law, the National Accountability Commission Bill, 2017, and instead wishes that it should be called the National Accountability Bureau Bill, 2017.
The Jamaat-e-Islami also rejected the NAC, as the party member Tariqullah said that JI wants improvements in the existing law. The party also submitted its recommendations to the committee for consideration. Meanwhile, the PTI staged a walkout from the committee's meeting, saying the government is not ready to listen to the party's demands. "We walked out of the meeting because of the government's behavior," said Shireen Mazari.
"The parliamentary committee meeting is not a classroom where we need to raise our hands and ask for permission to speak," the PTI's chief whip in the National Assembly said. She said the PTI would take the recommendations for the accountability commission to the Parliament. "There should be no differences regarding the appointment of the head of the commission," she said.
The parliamentary committee spent over a year contemplating to ensure across the board accountability and bring judges and generals within the purview of the new accountability law. However, the PTI and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) frustrated the whole process of drafting a legislation, shattering the consensus built around the nearly finalized bill by saying that they do not want to bring military and judiciary under the jurisdiction of the new law.
The MQM members had rejected the draft bill, while PTI member Shireen Mazari was of the view that her party would come up with its own recommendations for across the board accountability. Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Farhatullah Babar had presented the proposal regarding the inclusion of judges and generals in the definition of the term "public office-holder," but his party also retracted its suggestion of accountability of judges and generals on Wednesday.
The existing National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999, promulgated by General Pervez Musharraf, brought public office-holders, civil servants, politicians and even civilians under the ambit of the law, but exempted armed forces personnel as well as judges of the superior courts.
All parties have now agreed to leave members of the judiciary and military out of the process of accountability under the new legislation. Following the rejection of the new proposed law by the opposition parties PTI and JI, the law minister emphasized the importance of parties' unity in law amendments and recalled that accountability law of year 1999 is flawed so significant changes must be brought in to improve it.