KARACHI: A member of the Sindh chief minister’s own party has claimed that the 77-year-old politician is medically unfit to continue office. On Thursday, he requested the provincial election commission to disqualify him.
In Pakistan, the age of retirement for civil servants is 60 years but its enforcement varies.
The election commission did not accept the application, arguing that it was ineligible under articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution because the ‘complaint’ was a personal opinion.
The plaintiff, Dr Muhammad Ali Thalo, had personally gone to submit the application and later sent it via a courier service. He told the media that the application was just a formality before he actually files a petition in the Sindh High Court.
Thalo is a former student affairs coordinator for Benazir Bhutto.
In his application, he has stated that due to the chief minister’s age, Qaim Ali Shah cannot manage being the chief executive of the province and this was affecting Sindh’s administrative affairs. He stated in the application that Shah usually loses his temper during public gatherings, he cannot remember names of his cabinet members and he remains mentally absent during assembly sessions.
“The chief minister is not medically fit for the post because, according to the official record, he is 77 years old. I am not personally against Qaim Ali Shah but the chief executive of this province has to be energetic and medically fit,” he said. He proposed that the government should nominate him to the PPP elders’ committee instead.
Thalo went on to say that he had been affiliated with the party since the 1980s and Benazir Bhutto had nominated him as the chairman of the Sindh Doctors Ittehad in 1996.
He said that the PPP is not implementing its manifesto and a number of times, he had asked the CM to follow it, but “he always forgets”.
Thalo said that he was not entitled to file the petition in the Sindh High Court before knocking on the door of the provincial election commission. “Our next target will be Sindh High Court,” he said.
Talking to The Express Tribune, Sindh deputy election commissioner Muhammed Najeed said that the application did not come under the jurisdiction of the election commission which is why they did not accept it. “According to the regulations, there is no age limit for a chief minister and the court will decide this matter, not the election commission,” he said.
The chief minister’s spokesman said that Thalo had wanted some favours from the government and when the chief minister did not comply, he had started this “campaign” against him.
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