Degrees of separation in Pakistan
By Syed Fazl-e-Haider
KARACHI - Many politicians, including heavyweights of the major political parties, have been knocked out of Pakistan's upcoming elections on May 11 as electoral authorities and the judiciary swing into action against fake degree-holders.
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has undertaken ruthless scrutiny of candidates, while the courts are speedily disqualifying electoral candidates and former lawmakers for presenting fake degrees during the 2008 general elections. The Supreme Court on April 1 ordered the ECP to take action against candidates holding fake degrees and dual nationality. Following
the order, district courts and police across the country have arrested many former lawmakers and aspiring electoral candidates.
The political future of over 100 politicians is in jeopardy, as the crackdown over fake degrees against politicians. The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has confirmed 80 out of 183 degrees of former members of national and provincial assemblies and disapproved those of 101 others.
On Thursday, a local court at Muzzafargarh in Punjab province sentenced Jamshed Dasti, a Pakistan People's Party (PPP) member of the National Assembly after winning in the 2008 election, to three years in prison and a fine of 5,000 rupees (US$50).
On the same day, four other former lawmakers belonging to different political parties were sentenced by the courts across the country over the same offense. Syed Aqil Shah, former Awami National Party's (ANP) lawmaker from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was arrested after a court sentenced him to one-year imprisonment and imposed a fine of 3,000 rupees. Syed Salman Mohsin Gilani of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) was declared an offender, as was Amir Yar Waran, a former PPP lawmaker.
Similarly, a local court in southwestern Quetta city reserved its ruling in a fake degree case against Mir Ali Madad Jattak, a former provincial minister from Balochistan belonging to the PPP. This week Britain's Cambridge University declared a (senior school level) A-Level certificate submitted by former federal minister Shaikh Waqas Akram as a fake.
According to local newspaper Dawn, out of 183 former lawmakers given an opportunity to get their educational papers authenticated, only 80 had done so by the April 5 deadline.
There is a long list of former legislators who have been punished by the courts for forgery during the past week. Several former lawmakers were either jailed or declared proclaimed offender. Former minority member of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Kishore Kumar was jailed for having contested the previous general elections on a fake degree. Similarly, a local court on Wednesday issued arrest warrants of former federal lawmaker Rasheed Akbar Khan Niwani and former provincial lawmaker Saeed Akbar Khan Niwani in fake degree cases.
Mounting numbers of disqualifications have put the main political parties, PPP and PML(N), in a quandary and both parties delayed awarding tickets to candidates until the scrutiny process was completed on April 7. The ECP summoned 24 former parliamentarians on Friday for re-verification of degrees that the commission had earlier cleared.
Many politicians who contested the 2008 polls submitted forged degrees to meet the requirement of a vote law of former president Pervez Musharraf under which all parliamentarians were bound to hold a bachelor degree. Some faced disqualification as members of parliament, while many politicians are now being arrested as the ECP carries out the scrutiny of their submitted nomination papers.
The Express Tribune commented,
One of the many perplexing laws General (retd) Pervez Musharraf gifted us was the requirement that all parliamentarians should be graduates. The dictator essentially decreed that an overwhelming majority of the country was no longer capable of running for public office. Once it assumed power, the PPP government quite rightly disposed of his discriminatory law but its ramifications are still being felt. However, severely dealing with those who have betrayed public trust should serve as a deterrent to future candidates for election. We rightly expect those who represent us to have an unimpeachable moral character and those who lied on their nomination forms have let down the country.
It should also be kept in mind that these candidates are all guilty of perjury, which is a criminal offence in all countries, while those who faked degrees can also be charged with forgery for personal gain. ... Tax evaders, or even those who never filed taxes, should receive similar harsh treatment. ? General (retd) Musharraf may have tried to cleanse our political class with his graduate requirement; now it should actually be done by purging crooks and liars from office.
The commission has however distanced itself from the grilling of politicians at the hands of returning officers during the scrutiny of their nomination papers. In an official statement issued by the ECP on Thursday, it clarified that the returning officers are members of Pakistan's judiciary and the ECP does not direct the returning officers how to decide the fate of nomination forms.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry last week directed the returning officers of the ECP not to succumb to any pressure in discharging their responsibilities to deliver equal justice to both the voters and candidates.
On the other hand, nomination papers of several prominent politicians including former president Pervez Musharraf and former prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf were rejected after objections were raised against them. Ashraf's nomination papers for a Rawalpindi constituency were rejected on Sunday because he was accused of misappropriating funds and indulging in nepotism.
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Thursday raised objections to the nomination of Shahbaz Sharif, the former chief minister of Punjab and PML(N) Punjab president as a candidate to contest the upcoming polls. The NAB has sent the name of Sharif to the ECP with details reportedly showing him to be defaulter of payment against a 3.8 billion rupee loan obtained for Hudaibiya Paper Mills.
Objections have also been filed against the nomination papers of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif in relation to two funding investigations.
The ECP Thursday rejected nomination papers of PML-Q leader Faisal Saleh Hayat and PPP's Abid Imam on the charges of stealing irrigation water. Similarly, the nomination papers of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz candidate Ayaz Amir for a National Assembly seat have been rejected after reservations were raised over his columns concerning the ideology of Pakistan.
Dawn in its editorial said,
The manner in which the exercise of screening election candidates is being conducted cannot even be termed as childish. It is far worse. What is on display here is dripping with malice. At the same time, it speaks volumes for the current propensity to ridicule the most serious of matters. In making fun of the aspirants for the May 11 election, the returning officers are taking on a mischief-making role whose origins have time and again been traced in history, quite often and logically, to Gen Ziaul Haq's experiment in purity. But it is not impossible to locate the precursor of the current wave in the recent past. The exhibition emanates from the trend set by those who thrived on embarrassing, in fact humiliating, the politicians and other more vulnerable front men of the system. In one manifestation of this, the modern equivalent of the dog taking on the bear became prime-time fare on the channels.
Syed Fazl-e-Haider (www.syedfazlehaider.com) is a development analyst in Pakistan. He is the author of many books, including The Economic Development of Balochistan, published in May 2004. E-mail, sfazlehaider05@yahoo.com
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