ISLAMABAD: In a significant development, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Saturday decided to make disqualification clause of the constitution applicable to presidential candidates.
The ECP will obtain a declaration from presidential candidates affirming that they fulfil the qualifications specified in Article 62 of the constitution and that they are not hit by any of the disqualifications specified in Article 63, or any other law for the time being in force for being elected as the president of Pakistan.
The ECP amended the rule governing the presidential election on Sept 10, 2007, to take away the provision for disqualification of presidential candidates — less than a month before the polls comfortably won by the then military ruler, Gen Pervez Musharraf. Key opposition leaders, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, were in exile at that time.
The amendment in the presidential election rules, which is still in force, was kept a guarded secret by the ECP until it was disclosed by former minister for parliamentary affairs, Dr Sher Afgan.
Under the defunct section 5(3)(a) of the presidential election rules, the returning officer was empowered to conduct a summary inquiry and reject any nomination paper after determining that the candidate concerned was disqualified under the constitution to be elected as president. The section was simply struck off.
The justification for the abrupt amendment was that it was meant to bring the rule in conformity with two judgments of the Supreme Court passed in 2002 and 2005.
The justification, however, did not satisfy many who believed that if the change in rules in light of the judgements was at all required why the ECP kept sleeping over it for years and came out with it weeks before the election to explicitly favour Gen Musharraf.
A bench of the Supreme Court, headed by former chief justice Sheikh Riaz Ahmad on a petition filed by Jamaat-i-Islami chief Qazi Hussian Ahmad challenging the referendum order of April 27, 2002, observed that disqualification clauses listed under Article 63 of the constitution were not applicable to the president’s election.
A similar observation was given in another judgment passed in 2005.
Interestingly, incumbent Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was member of both the benches.
The ECP has yet to amend the controversial amendment introduced in the rules, but a senior official of the ECP said the nomination papers of all presidential candidates would be scrutinised on the touchstone of the constitution. He conceded that rules cannot override the substantive constitutional provisions.
The amendment had been introduced to allow the then military ruler, Gen Pervez Musharraf, to contest presidential poll while in military uniform.