Friday, Jul 12, 2002
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By B. Muralidhar Reddy
While rejecting petitions by several political parties, the five-member Bench of the apex court said, "for reasons to be recorded later, the Bench has unanimously dismissed these petitions''. The Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-i-Azam), the Awami National Party (ANP), the Pakistan Awami Party, the former, filed the petitions MNA Chaudhry Muhammad Ilyas and Jamhoori Watan Party arguing that the condition was a violation of fundamental rights. Prescription of graduation as minimum qualification to contest election for the national and provincial elections is expected to hit hard all the political parties. There were high hopes among the political parties on Wednesday that the apex court might declare the clause illegal when the Chief Justice, Sheikh Riaz Ahmad observed that voters were the best judge to decide which candidate was best. Another judge on the Bench, Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, had observed that the Government was spending only 2.3 per cent of the GDP on the education but it was expecting everybody to be a graduate. Justice Nazim Hussain Siddiqui had said graduates in the urban areas might be in abundance but this was not the case with rural areas. The Attorney General had told the apex court that there was no government survey about the number of graduates in the country, but an NGO had conducted some exercise showing there was no dearth of educated candidates. The AG argued that the right to contest was not a fundamental right, and under Article 62 and 63 of the Constitution, qualifications and disqualification for the Member of Parliament and provincial Assemblies have been enumerated. He said that Article 62(i) specifically provided that more qualifications could be added to the existing list of qualifications. Commenting on the Supreme Court verdict, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led by the former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, said it was disappointed. ``The verdict will place fetters on the right of an overwhelming majority of the eligible candidates to contest and of the voters to elect their representatives particularly in the rural areas of the country. In no other democratic country of the world such unrealistic conditions are imposed which circumscribe the right of the people to contest and also limits the choice of the people whom to elect as their representative in the legislative bodies'', it said.
EC directive
The Pakistan Election Commission directed political parties to comply with the new rules made to the Political Parties Act or be prepared to face the consequences. In a letter to the registered parties, the Commission reminded that under the new order they are required to submit to the EC all the relevant documents about the election of office-bearers at all levels and submit audited accounts by August 5. By any stretch of imagination it is a tall order for the parties. Two former Prime Ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who led the two main political parties in the country — the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) would have to step down and give way for new leadership as convicted persons are not eligible to hold party posts.
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