Opposition never asked for NRO: Farooq Naek

ISLAMABAD: Former law minister and senior Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Senator Farooq H Naek has questioned as to how the proposed amendments in the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) law could be described as opposition’s demand for NRO-like amnesty. This is what the government asked for, he said.

“A meeting between the top representatives of the government and the opposition parties was held at the Speaker’s House in Islamabad to mull over the proposed laws relating to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for their hassle-free parliamentary passage,” Naek, who was one of the participants, told The News, Monday.

Naek, who had prepared the elaborate draft of amendments to the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999, said that along with the FATF-specific laws, the government had called for amendments to the NAO and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) had given it a draft of changes. “That’s all. It is not in my knowledge as to who demanded the NRO, when and where. I don’t know why these amendments are being dubbed as such.”

The former law minister said it was up to the government to accept the recommendations of the PPP and PML-N. “Since they solicited the amendments to the NAO, we suggested thirty-four changes. We never insisted that the government must accept them.”

Naek said that in the meeting the official representatives had stated that the government would look into the proposed changes and get back. “Since then there has been no contact between the two sides about these amendments.”

He said it was known that the government had accepted the amendments prescribed by the PPP and PML-N to the FATF laws. That is why, he said, these legislations were unanimously passed by both the Houses of Parliament with the opposition’s support.

Naek said the FATF laws introduced by the government required improvement, which the opposition parties did and the other side accepted it. He said the amendments to the NAO suggested by the PPP and PML-N in the closed-door meeting were unnecessarily made a scandal by the government, and chants of NRO were being raised.

“In any such negotiations, proposals always come from both sides and a consensus is worked out through debate and discussion.”

Naek said the parleys were confined to only putting forward proposals and there was nothing more than that. “There was no question of seeking an NRO by the opposition parties and giving it by the government.”

He said that most of the amendments offered by the opposition were those that had been recommended by the superior courts time and again. A draft of amendments was also formulated in a meeting held in Lahore a few months back. Those changes were also delivered to the government, but there has been no forward movement. Besides, another set of proposals was prepared by PML-N leader Ishaq Dar in consultation with senior lawyers who have been appearing in the accountability and superior courts to fight the NAB instituted cases.