The accountability process has been used and abused throughout the country’s political history by both elected and military governments for various ends, including but not limited to political engineering and victimization. It has become a time-tested tool to keep the opposition in check and in disarray. Starting from the Public Representative Offices Disqualification Act (PRODA) in 1947 to the National Accountability Bureau Ordinance of 1999, the accountability laws and tactics have come a long way to reach their present state: i.e. where they have little credibility. The party leading the current government had included a promise of across-the-board accountability in its election manifesto. However, its much-hyped drive has met with little success so far. Instead of making major recoveries – as claimed by the prime minister and his colleagues – the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has galvanized the opposition parties through a spate of high-profile arrests. The fact of the matter is that the NAB law is bad in its scope, spirit and application. It is an impossible task to pick a part of the law that violates human rights because that would imply that the rest of the law is okay. The problem is that the entire edifice of the NAB law stands on the provisions that violate constitutional guarantees. Human rights activists and defenders agree that the NAB rules violate the constitutional safeguards against arbitrary arrest and detention by keeping people in custody for up to 90 days, by not granting them the right to statutory bail, by reversing the burden of proof and in prescribing stricter sentences. The government, on the other hand, insists that the accountability process is impartial and that cases have also been registered against major political figures linked to the government and its allies. The NAB and the government also point to recoveries that they say have far outstripped its performance over the previous years and put it down to a more conducive environment. However, the success is a moot point considering that most of the recoveries are ‘indirect’ and not a direct result of investigation and prosecution.