An appeal to the apex court

Letter June 09, 2018
Supreme Court needs to ask the ECP to place a scanned copy of all affidavits submitted by contestants on its website

KARACHI: The people of Pakistan deeply appreciate the Supreme Court ruling requiring all those aspiring to be parliamentarians to submit an affidavit. There are however two impediments that could largely nullify the entire purpose of these affidavits. First, the ECP’s failure to scan and place all affidavits on its website. Not doing so will deprive the voters of the critical decision-making information and also their fundamental right to information as guaranteed by Article 19A of the Constitution. Two, inadequate scrutiny of the information provided in affidavits. The ECP has traditionally left the task of objections to rival contestants. While all voters should be able to identify and point out errors in data provided, it ought to be the ECP’s primary responsibility to scrutinise the information and take action to disqualify where a false statement has been made. The ECP so far has failed to create its own verification processes.

The Supreme Court is requested to ask the ECP to place a scanned copy of all affidavits submitted by contestants on its website. The ECP should be asked and be held responsible to itself scrutinise (or create a capacity to do so if currently not available), the information provided by contestants in their affidavits. This can be easily achieved if the ECP was to create electronic linkages with all organisations concerned.

Naeem Sadiq

Published in The Express Tribune, June 9th, 2018.

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