Editorial
Allow the ACC to work independently
It shouldn't relapse into anti-corruption bureau status
None other than the chairman of Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) Ghulam Rahman has voiced his concern over possible further dilution of the ACC's authority and mandate as an anti-graft watchdog body. Within months into his job he seems to have come to realise that the ACC is a 'toothless tiger' to borrow his expression but his current worries are that it is now possibly on the verge of morphing into a 'clawless' body.
For, according to some proposals sent by the cabinet committee to the ACC for its opinion, the government seeks to require of the ACC to obtain its prior permission before filing anti-graft cases against public officials, policy makers, lawmakers and local body representatives. While reacting to such a move by the cabinet committee, the incumbent in ACC has demurred at the effort at making 'the commission more powerless by changing its laws in the name of reform'. Most people will share his concern.
The independence of the Anti-Corruption Commission was deemed to have been ensured by delinking it from the Prime Minister's Office(PMO) which went down well as a qualitative change in the anti-corruption dispensation. Much of the ills and ineffectiveness of the so called Bureau of Anti-Corruption originated in its being an appendage to the PMO. But by requiring the ACC to obtain prior permission of the government before drawing anti-corruption proceedings against just about anybody who is somebody in the country, that structural separation of the ACC from the PMO is seemingly being put paid to.
Although the ACC has not delivered the goods expected of it, yet it is a fact that the level of public consciousness of the need to fight corruption in high places has intensified in recent years. In this context, we wish to point out that since the proposals are in a recommendatory phase, the government will be well advised not to go ahead with these; instead, be supportive of independent working of the ACC as a pivotal, statutory anti-graft body. However, our comment will be incomplete if we don't point to the pressing need for making the prosecution cast-iron if we are to make the crusade against corruption a success.
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