Who would've thought

This parliament's record for checking corruption is rather impressive

At a time when the political dispensation is being criticized for poor governance, the parliament and its oversight committees need to be more vigilant. The key fiscal accountability tool available to the parliament is the National Assembly?s Public Accounts Committee (PAC). The committee, which is supposed to guard the public purse andsupervise public finance, has been dysfunctional since the resignation of its chairman Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan in November 2011. The government is yet to make a new appointment.??
An effective mechanism of monetary checks and balances is generally considered necessary to prevent leakages of national resources and is thus crucial to financial consolidation. With corruption taking deep roots in our society, oversight and accountability by the parliament are extremely important, especially because the ability of departments to stop fiscal leakages is very limited. The Public Accounts Committee is mandated to scrutinize annual audit reports of public finances and ask public officials how they have spent public money.
But the irony of the situation is that the parliament that is supposed to keep an eye on corrupt practices in government departments could not even protect the rights of the employees of the National Assembly itself.
Hundreds of employees of the lower house of parliament had been paying installments to buy plots in a scheme for several years, but they never got them. The House and Library Committee of the National Assembly took up the matter to find out who the culprits were and bring them to book. After initial hearings, Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi, who chairs the committee, handed the task over to a special committee, which named the perpetrators of the financial scam in a report it submitted to the house. The committee had recommended strict disciplinary action against certain top officials of the National Assembly Secretariat and Islamabad Capital Territory administration, but they approached the court for a stay order. The case is now in the court.
The PAC is already lagging by several years, and has so far hardly touched audit reports from the present government?s tenure. There was a need to overcome the backlog and accelerate the process, but the committee became dysfunctional and the process came to a complete halt.
The auditor general has reportedly pointed out a number of audit paras involving approximately Rs 400 billion against the incumbent government, and that is perhaps why the government is not appointing a new chairman.
Former PAC chairman Senator M Hamza called it criminal negligence on the part of the government. With the backlog piling up, the committee is losing its efficacy, he said. ?There should be a PAC Act on the pattern of a similar law in India, under which the committee should perform its functions. The PAC must have suo moto powers so as to take action against the embezzlements pointed out,? he added. He also said defence spending should also be subject to audit by the auditor general of Pakistan. The PAC could not just help check financial irregularities, he said, but also help recover the embezzled money.
It was after the media pointed out corruption in government departments that special committees of the parliament were constituted to probe into them. The scale and magnitude of the corruption and the consequent loss to the public exchequer was alarming. In some cases, the alleged involvement of politicians at highest levels was also witnessed.
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PAC?s achievements:
According to a report, the dysfunctional PAC was constituted on April 10, 2008 and it was given the gigantic task of examining audit reports of 12 years. It cleared a backlog of six years and its directives resulted in the recovery of Rs 115 billion, which is even more than the recovery made by NAB.
The general committee examined approximately 3,038 audit paras relating to years 2007-08 and 2008-09, special committee-I examined 81 paras, special committee-II looked at 525 paras for the years 1990-91, 1992-93 and 2000-01, and special committee-III examined 568 paras for the years 1994-95 and 1997-98. In addition, the Monitoring and Implementation Committee of the PAC examined 1,287 paras approximately. The total number of paras examined was approximately 5,499.
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Audit of Public Sector Organizations:
The increasing tendency to exclude the audit of public sector bodies from the purview of the auditor general dilutes the concept of sustainable accountability through legislative oversight. Reports of the private auditors appointed by the management of public sector corporations are not presented to the legislature. The PAC feels a need to ascertain whether some provisions of the Power and Functions of Auditor General of Pakistan Ordinance 2001, the Companies Act, and other acts/provisions of the rules regulating the audit of accounts of public sector organizations have a restrictive effect on the jurisdiction of the auditor general, thereby encouraging other newly-created authorities and autonomous bodies to avoid audit by the auditor general. This impacts the legislative oversight of public funds. The 18th amendment now authorizes the auditor general to audit accounts of ?any authority or body established by, or under control of, the federal or provincial governments?. This constitutional requirement is yet to be realized and met in full.

Recovery of lost money:
A suitable anti-corruption mechanism must include imposing damages on the guilty and recover the embezzled money from them. All ill-gotten wealth should be seized and confiscated by the government. The present laws against corruption therefore need to be overhauled. There is a need to end political control of investigative agencies and the root causes of political corruption must be addressed, besides strengthening prosecution against the accused.
?Controlling the flight of capital from Pakistan is undoubtedly important, but I would give priority to a foolproof procedure for getting back assets transferred and kept in foreign banks under the names of offshore companies,? renowned legal expert and parliamentarian S M Zafar said. ?Once such a mechanism is operative and effective, it will automatically discourage the flight of money from Pakistan.? But such an initiative had to be taken by the government rather than the parliament, he added.
It is the government that has to negotiate agreements with foreign countries to allow Pakistani investigative agencies to probe such accounts, he said. The international environment was conducive to such measures, he added. ?Developed countries had come to the conclusion that the money brought illegally to their banks by foreign citizens would deprive the poor people of those countries of their due financial benefits, he said, and they would be willing to cooperate with Pakistan in this regard. ?
?We don?t need any law for this,? S M Zafar said, ?But a resolution by the parliament can highlight the need for such action. If the government still fails to act, the Supreme Court can be approached, as has been done in India.?
He said an anti money laundering law had already been passed by the parliament and the government needs to show the will to implement it through its various agencies. ?This will be an act of good governance,? he said, ?and would help save money that can be spent on Pakistan.?

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