ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Law and Justice on Thursday approved with a majority vote two controversial bills seeking to amend the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO), 1999, amid opposition’s protest and walkout.

The opposition members staged a walkout from the committee’s meeting after its chairman, Riaz Fatyana, who belongs to the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), declared that the bills had been passed with a nine-seven vote.

The opposition members accused the committee’s chairman of putting the bills for voting without completing the discussion on them and after seeing that the treasury members were more in number than the opposition.

Two opposition members — Khawaja Saad Rafique and Rana Sanaullah of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) — were not present at the time of voting.

Opposition members stage a walkout after committee’s chairman announces approval of the bills

Mr Rafique, however, entered the committee’s room soon after the voting and protested against the chairman for putting the bills to a vote despite knowing that he was on his way from Lahore to attend the meeting.

Talking to Dawn after the committee’s meeting, Syed Naveed Qamar of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) alleged that the chairman of the committee even “scuttled” the ongoing discussion as soon as he saw the two treasury members joining the meeting, which brought the government members into a majority, and put the two bills for voting.

The opposition members had already submitted their dissenting notes on the two bills, namely the National Accountability (Second Amendment) Bill, 2021, and the National Accountability (Third Amendment) Bill, 2021.

Mr Qamar also objected to the decision of National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser to replace Agha Hassan Baloch of the Balochistan National Party (BNP-M) with Mehboob Shah of the PTI in the committee.

Mr Shah attended the committee’s meeting for the first time on Wednesday and he was welcomed by treasury members.

Through the bills, which had already been promulgated through ordinances last year, the government had not only granted an extension to incumbent chairman of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) retired Justice Javed Iqbal, but he had also been allowed to continue to hold the office till the appointment of his successor in case of no consultation between the prime minister and the opposition leader.

The bills have sharply reduced the jurisdiction of NAB and enabled the president to reappoint the incumbent NAB chairman or extend his tenure.

Another salient feature of the ordinances was exclusion of federal and provincial cabinets, business community and collective decisions of the committees or sub-committees, Council of Common Interests, National Economic Council, National Finance Commission, Executive Committee of National Economic Council, Central Development Working Party, Provincial Development Working Party, Departmental Development Working Party and State Bank of Pakistan from the ambit of NAB.

At one point of time during the committee’s meeting, the treasury and the opposition members had a heated verbal clash when PPP’s Abdul Qadir Mandokhel delivered an aggressive speech and some of the treasury members objected to his tone and language.

Mr Mandokhel and Ataullah of the PTI also exchanged some harsh words against each other.

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2022