This article was published in Dawn on July 04, 2016 and is available at the following link

https://www.dawn.com/news/1268918/is-a-commission-enough

The Panama leaks have led to the welcome development of corruption at high places being widely discussed, debated and condemned in the media, public and parliament. What is not so comforting is the fact that almost the entire debate is focused on the formation of a high-level commission to probe the perceived or real irregularities committed by the top political leadership of the country.

While the campaign to form a judicial commission with agreed terms of reference may continue, it is extremely perplexing and disappointing that there was almost no action taken by the institutions created for the very purpose of accountability.

The state has taken considerable pains over the years to create such institutions as the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and has spent billions of rupees to maintain them. Isn’t it a pity, then, that every time an accountability crisis strikes or a mega-corruption case emerges, we start looking for a new mechanism, platform or institution, completely forgetting that we have already invested a huge amount of national will and taxpayers’ money and created permanent institutions for this very purpose?

Each time an accountability crisis strikes we start looking for a new institution to address it.

One may advance the argument that the existing institutions are not credible and trustworthy, and that therefore we need new commissions or other institutions. This argument is flawed on many counts. If we can create credible new institutions, what stops us from reforming the existing ones? In all likelihood, it will take much less effort to do so and the result will be of permanent value.

Secondly, we have seen such commissions created with a lot of fanfare in the past and after the findings were made public, at least one of the contending parties has taken no time to disagree with them and even doubted the competence or intent, or both, of the commission so created. In the end the new commission hardly solves any problem.

The commission of inquiry formed under a former chief justice of Pakistan to probe the allegations of organised rigging in the 2013 general election, under an agreed set of terms of reference, failed to convince the PTI leadership that no organised rigging took place in 2013 and that the election result did reflect the will of the people of Pakistan. The creation of new commissions or institutions, therefore, does not automatically guarantee their credibility. Even if such commissions are able to resolve a question put to them, we will again need to go back to permanent state institutions created for this purpose to take the cases to their logical conclusion.

Pakistan has experimented with a number of models to address the menace of white-collar corruption. Pakistan inherited the Special Police Establishment, created in 1938, and named it Pakistan Special Police Establishment (PSPE) in 1947. We created a West Pakistan Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) in 1961, which devolved into four provincial ACEs after the disbandment of One Unit. The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) was created in 1975 to replace PSPE. An Ehtesab Commission in 1996 and Ehtesab Bureau in 1997 manifested the increasing concern about the menace of corruption in the country. Finally, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was created in 1999 by the military government led by Pervez Musharraf under the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO), 1999.

All these institutions lost their credibility when the governments of the time, both led by politicians and military men, tried to use them for political motives by resorting to selective accountability, political victimisation and withdrawal of cases against those who fell in line with the government.

One major weakness in the laws controlling these institutions was the unbridled power of the ruling party to appoint and remove the heads of these institutions. A major improvement in the law governing NAB was introduced through the National Accountability (Amendment) Ordinance, 2002 when the appointment of the NAB chairman was required to be made through a bipartisan process involving the consultation with the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly. Consultation with the leader of the opposition by the prime minister required under this amendment was made meaningful and effective after the Supreme Court specified the extent and requisites of the consultation.

Following these two developments, NAB has attained, to a great extent, the position of a truly independent entity largely protected from partisan influences. There may still be room for improvement in its law like any man-made law. Based on a number of studies, NAO, or the NAB ordinance, has been assessed as one of the most effective accountability laws in the world.

The need of the hour is to make NAB do its job independently and effectively. Parliament and especially the standing committees of the Senate and National Assembly on law and justice have a special responsibility in this context. Parliamentary committees should hold special meetings to ask NAB the reasons for its dormancy in the context of the recent Panama leaks. FIA and the Federal Board of Revenue are not independent entities as the influence of the executive on the postings, transfers and operations in these entities is far greater than in the case of NAB.

While efforts to make these two institutions independent of the influence of the government of the day should continue, a greater emphasis should be placed on making NAB more pro-active and effective.

The Panama scandal is not the first instance when cases of corruption at high levels have been revealed; neither will it be the last. We, therefore, need a permanent, independent, reliable and self-actuating institution to deal with such cases as they come to light without anyone needing to organise street agitation. Opposition political parties, especially the PTI, need to make use of the current climate to institute such a sustainable anti-corruption mechanism. The quest should begin by activating NAB.