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ISLAMABAD: After a three-year run, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan stepped down as the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly on November 27. The resignation wasn't entirely unexpected: ever since the appointment of Akhtar Buland Rana as the new auditor-general of Pakistan (AGP) in August, Mr Khan had increasingly hinted at leaving the most important standing committee of the National Assembly.
While announcing his resignation on Sunday, Mr Khan, who is also opposition leader in the lower house of the Parliament, said he was leaving because the government wanted to run the committee on political lines and was not taking the PAC's recommendations seriously. In his talk to the press, he made a clear reference to Mr Rana's appointment, which he described as 'controversial' and the tipping point that forced him to leave the committee.
Mr Khan was appointed to the position to mark the spirit of the Charter of Democracy (Cod) signed between Mian Nawaz Sharif and late Benazir Bhutto in London in May 2006. In the three years as the in-charge of the PAC, both the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP) have relentlessly bragged about their role in making the committee functional, which had been dormant in previous governments. The PPP leaders say that put the PAC in the hands of the opposition leader so that he might carry out accountability of the government whereas the PML-N argues that it is due to the untiring efforts of Chaudhry Nisar that the PAC has been able to recover more than Rs100 billion stuck in and misused by various government departments over the years.
Public accounts committees throughout the world in parliamentary-style governments play a key role in bringing financial discipline to public sector organisations. No doubt, it has been a good sign for the democracy in Pakistan as well as each and every penny released by the federal government was to be endorsed by the PAC.
However, there are a number of questions that have been left unanswered with Mr Khan resigning.
One, will he step down from his position as leader of the opposition because under the CoD, the document his leadership holds in high esteem, the chairmanship of the PAC will go to the opposition leader? Neither he addressed this question nor did the media corps on the occasion seek his comment on this important point.
Secondly, under the Constitution, the appointment of the AGP is the sole prerogative of the sitting prime minister. According to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, Mr Rana was the senior-most officer among the entire audit and accounts group, and hence deserved the elevation. Agreed that Mr Khan had reservations about the new AGP that he did not repress, what point was he making by resigning from his post?
At the press conference, Mr Khan expressed his fear that PPP members would not pay heed to him in the upcoming PAC meetings especially since the committee was to take up accounts of the Gilani government. But then again he was the chairman of the PAC and no ordinary member, and could not have been subdued by the PPP members. He would not have been able to roar and thunder but could have made an impact on the committee proceedings. Above all, the PAC is open to live media coverage and it would not have been easy for PPP members to bulldoze PAC's agenda to sweep their government's wrongdoing under the carpet, as Mr Nisar apprehended.
Last but not the least, now was the time for Mr Khan to stamp his presence in the PAC, because over the last three years his committee only took up pending audit paras relating to previous governments some of them from the late 80s and early 90s. Probably, this was the reason, during all previous PAC meetings all its members both from opposition and treasury benches were on same page. They endorsed tough penalties for anyone found involved in misusing public funds, and there was hardly any dissent in committee proceedings. So far, it was smooth sailing for Mr Khan.
According to one of his fellow PML-N lawmakers, who is also member of the PAC, Mr Khan would have conducted at least a few meetings to see how the new AGP and other PPP PAC members would react to audit objections on the present government. Quitting the field merely on the basis of apprehensions wasn't a good political move on the part of Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, said the PML-N MNA who requested anonymity.
According to another close observer of the PAC, Mr Khan had spewed so much vitriol against the new AGP, he was finding it difficult to work with him. In the scheme of things, the chairman PAC had no other option but to bank upon AGP and his team of auditors in bringing culprits to the book.
One can only hope that the country's political leadership understands the difference between their personal egos and national duties.
