Election Commission drags degree verification process

Five months after the Supreme Court order, no parliamentarian has been put on trial.

ISLAMABAD: In violation of a Supreme Court directive, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is dragging its feet on the degree verification process of 54 federal and provincial legislators, who allegedly contested the 2008 elections with fake academic degrees.

An extraordinarily lenient procedure adopted by the ECP for degree verification has proved to be the main cause for the delay.

The Supreme Court in its landmark judgments on June 14 this year directed the ECP to prosecute the accused parliamentarians by session judges.

The apex court had further directed the ECP to ensure that the investigations in the matter should be conducted ‘’honestly, efficiently and expeditiously before sending them for trial.”

In any case, it should not take each sessions judge who gets seized of the matter, more than three months to conclude the same, the apex court judgment had said.

However, despite the passage of five months, the ECP has not been able to refer a single case against the accused for prosecution. In fact, Minister for Postal Services Mir Israrullah Zehri, who had flatly refused to appear before the commission, was not put on trial.  It appears that it will take the ECP at least two more months to fulfil its constitutional and legal obligations and prosecute the accused legislators.

Two federal ministers and a provincial minister are among the lawmakers whose academic documents were declared ‘fake’ by the Higher Education Commission. There are many cases of accused MPs who were given more than three chances to appear before the ECP, but failed to abide by the law.  It is mentioned in the summons issued to the accused MPs that “if you fail to appear before the ECP it will be concluded that you have nothing to defend yourself.”

“We are not bothered as to  what people say about us,” said secretary ECP  Ishtiaq Ahmed when asked to comment on  the general perception that the ECP is under government pressure to delay the process.

‘’We are aware as to what people say about us, but let me assure them that neither the matter will be delayed nor will it be decided in a rush,” he said . “We are not being asked by anyone to delay the process,” Ahmed added.

The ECP official added that the findings of the HEC are not the final word on the issue. ‘’We are giving all legislators the right to defend themselves before sending their cases for trial,” he said.

The secretary parried the question as to why the process of examining the cases of 54 MPs is not being conducted “expeditiously” as directed by the SC.

However, he told The Express Tribune that by the end of next month most cases would be finalised – to be referred for prosecution or otherwise. “Four cases against accused MPs have been sent to the chief election commissioner for his decision,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.