ECP notified of new CEC appointment

Justice (retired) Sardar Raza will work as chief election commissioner for the next five years

ISLAMABAD: A notification regarding the nomination of Justice (retired) Sardar Raza as the new chief election commissioner (CEC) was sent to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Friday, Express News reported.

The long wait for the appointment of a CEC came to an end on December 4 when the Parliamentary Committee on the Appointment of Chief Election Commissioner nominated Raza for the position.

He will stand as the CEC for a tenure of five years.

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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.