At long last: Justice Sardar Raza named new CEC

The appointment caps months of foot-dragging on part of govt, opposition.

ABBOTABAD/ ISLAMABAD:

After months of procrastination and uncertainty, the federal government has finally appointed Justice (retd) Sardar Muhammad Raza as the chief election commissioner (CEC) for the next five years.

With only a day left before the Supreme Court pulled its sitting judge – Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali – from the CEC’s post, President Mamnoon Hussain appointed Raza as the country’s top electoral officer on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s advice on Thursday. His name was finalised only hours earlier by the 12-member parliamentary committee on the appointment of the CEC following a brief meeting.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Senator Rafiq Ranjwana, the head of the panel responsible for picking the CEC, said Justice (retd) Raza was the committee’s unanimous choice from among three retired judges. Others on the list were Justice (retd) Tariq Pervez and Justice (retd) Tanvir Ahmed.

“At the start of the meeting, [Pakistan Peoples Party’s] Islamuddin Sheikh proposed the name of Justice Sardar Raza when I asked him to begin the discussion,” Ranjwana said. “[Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s] Farooq Sattar was the first to endorse Raza’s name, followed by [Awami National Party’s] Haji Adeel Khan and members from PML-N and PPP.”

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) representative on the panel, Shahryar Afridi, did not attend the session.

With the president’s approval, Justice Raza will now take oath as the CEC today (Friday). Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Nasirul Mulk will administer the oath.



Born in Abbottabad in 1945, Raza is the fourth judge from the city to hold the post of CEC, behind Sajjad Ahmed Jan, Sardar Fakhr-e-Alam and Qazi Farooq Pasha.

Prior to his appointment, he had been working as the chief justice of the Federal Shariat Court since June this year. The 69-year-old jurist quit the post to take over his new assignment as the head of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

This won’t be his first stint as the country’s top electoral official, however. Raza has served as acting CEC on two previous occasions. He held the post briefly in 2009 when then CEC Justice (retd) Hamid Ali Mirza went abroad on official trips.

Known for his impeccable judicial record, Justice Raza was among the judges who refused to take oath under former president Pervez Musharraf’s Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) in 2007. He was also among the few judges who wrote dissenting notes in judgments passed by benches headed by ex-CJP Iftikhar Chaudhry.

With Raza’s appointment, the ECP will finally get a permanent head after 16 months. The post has been lying vacant since July 31, 2013, when Justice (retd) Fakhruddin G Ebrahim resigned only a year into his tenure as CEC.

Although Justice Ebrahim, in his resignation letter, cited personal reasons for his abrupt decision to quit the office, sources close to him claim he was perturbed at being a ‘powerless’ head of the ECP. The 18th constitutional amendment enacted in 2010 has stripped the CEC of discretionary powers, leaving the top electoral officer only a figurehead at ECP meetings. All major decisions are now taken based on the majority vote of the five ECP members – the CEC and the four provincial election commissioners.

Ebrahim also viewed then CJP Iftikhar Chaudhry’s decision to advance the dates for the election of the president of Pakistan as an encroachment over ECP’s domain. After his proposal to file a review against the order was rejected by the other ECP members, he decided to step down as the head of the commission.

PTI’s reaction

Reacting to the appointment, PTI Information Secretary Dr Shireen Mazari claimed that the party was not consulted in the process. “We were merely informed at the last minute by Leader of Opposition Khursheed Shah through PTI Vice Chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi,” she said in an official statement.

Mazari added that while PTI holds Justice Raza in high esteem, his appointment as CEC was by itself insufficient to establish an independent election commission.

“The CEC is only one of five election commissioners,” she said. “We hope that the new CEC will remove the controversial members of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and ensure all [provincial] election commissioners are appointed in an independent manner through mutual consultation amongst all major political parties.”

Responding to Mazari’s statement, Senator Ranjwana termed PTI’s demand ‘unconstitutional’.

“There is a procedure for removing members of the ECP laid down in article 209 of the Constitution,” he said. “Either the member resigns himself or a reference for his removal is sent to the Supreme Judicial Council.”

“You cannot curtail the term of a member without adopting constitutional procedure,” he added.


Published in The Express Tribune, December 5^th, 2014.