Pakistan: Continuing disquiet over scrutiny process

EDITORIAL:DAILY TIMES

The polity continues to express disquiet over the manner in which the scrutiny process is proceeding. Some big guns, including former prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf have had their nomination papers for the elections rejected, although on questionable grounds. Further, the anomalies in the manner in which the Returning Officers (ROs) are accepting or rejecting nomination papers, often accepting a candidate in one constituency while rejecting him in others, speaks volumes about the chaotic and anarchic scrutiny process. To prove the point, Raja Pervez Ashraf’s papers have been rejected in his native Gujjar Khan on the grounds that there are charges and allegations against him in the Rental Power case, while General (retd) Musharraf’s have been accepted in Chitral (albeit rejected in three other constituencies) on the grounds that the charges of murder and treason against him have not yet been proved in a court of law. When we last checked, neither had Raja Pervez Ashraf been convicted in any case against him. Does the time honoured principle of ‘innocent until proved guilty’ still hold for all cases or is it to be applied selectively? So what are the criteria and principles on which the scrutiny process is supposed to be conducted, and is there any uniformity in it? The ROs have become a power unto themselves, without any guidance or training in how to conduct the scrutiny. Hence the lack of uniformly applicable principles on which the candidates are tested. As a result, absurdities such as testing candidates’ Islamic credentials and knowledge of religion, not to mention personal details, have crept into the scrutiny process with a vengeance. Unfortunately, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has chosen to distance itself from the way the process is playing out as the better part of valour. Nevertheless, the ECP cannot so easily absolve itself of responsibility for the mess. The ROs may be judicial officers in their other avatar, but in the scrutiny process they are acting as agents of the ECP. How then can the ECP turn its face away from the spreading chaos by trying to hide behind the facade of ‘no power to issue directions to the ROs’? So much for the loudly touted independence of the ECP headed by Justice (retd) Fakhruddin G Ebraheem. On the other hand the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry feels no hesitation in addressing a series of meetings of ROs up and down the country in which he continues to encourage them to do their duty without fear or favour and according to the law. Quite apart from the inappropriateness of the CJP addressing the ROs per se, and that too at this sensitive moment in the middle of the scrutiny process, his words are having the effect of the ROs relying increasingly on the provisions of Articles 62 and 63 to judge the suitability or otherwise of candidates. We have repeatedly pointed out in this space that the credentials of these articles are, to put it mildly, suspect, since they were the brainchild of dictator General Ziaul Haq, are vague, subjective and legally unsound, and therefore cannot by any stretch of the imagination be made the basis for deciding the fate of candidates, the Supreme Court’s view on these articles notwithstanding. The other day, the architect of the 18th Amendment, Senator Raza Rabbani of the PPP revealed that it was the JUI-F’s slippery Maulana Fazlur Rehman who opposed the deletion of these articles from the constitution. He might as well have added that the Maulana had plenty of support from the right wing forces in the parliamentary committee seized of the matter, not to mention some of the political ‘scions’ of the Zia dictatorship. The chaotic and anarchic scrutiny process has disappointed all the democratic forces. If some big and small guns nevertheless manage to slip through the ROs’ dragnet, it will owe more to luck and the particular RO rather than any systematic approach to what constitutes an acceptable or unacceptable candidate. Let us hope the country can be spared further angst through the process of appeals against the ROs’ decisions to the election tribunals, which appear to have their work cut out for them, given the possible volume of such appeals and the short time available for deciding them.