The conduct of the presiding officer, a schoolteacher, was most honourable and dignified.
RAWALPINDI: What Waheeda Shah did to the female presiding officer at the polling station is highly deplorable and most unbecoming of a female aspirant legislator. Contrary to her brutal behaviour and assault crime, the conduct of the presiding officer, a schoolteacher, was most honourable and dignified. She suffered the humiliation with tears in her eyes. The schoolteacher could have retaliated blow for blow and slap for slap but her moral fibre, which is certainly better than that of the aspirant legislator, restrained her from stooping to that low ebb.
Now that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has been made a fully-independent body through the Twentieth Amendment, it has its very first case before it and the whole nation is watching rather closely for the action it will take. Shah appears to be a powerful lady from the ruling class and has already managed a press conference where a burqa-clad lady, purported to be the presiding officer, exonerated Shah of the physical assault dismissing it as an inadvertent act owing to a misunderstanding.
However, it is now for the ECP to probe into the matter and establish its writ with its first case warranting immediate action. An independent, fair and firm ECP is the hope of the nation for ensuring honest and correct leadership to rule over the land of the pure, and not become another spineless state institution.
Col. (retd) Riaz Jafri
Published in The Express Tribune, March 7th, 2012.
