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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BubbaFred who wrote (42134)	1/17/2002 6:40:33 PM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

More than 60 per cent national and provincial legislators elected in the last five elections since 1985 are disqualified to stand in the forthcoming general polls for lacking educational qualification of graduation, prescribed for the candidates. The qualification condition will particularly affect the religious parties, if not wipe out them completely, like the two factions of the JUI and their heads. The MNAs and MPAs belonging to the JUI-F of Maulana Fazlur Rehman had always been thorough religious persons, lacking normal educational qualifications. The News reporting today...,.. The ouster of religious parties, most of which are part of the Pak- Afghan Defence Council that General Musharraf abhors, is part of the present government's agenda in the prevailing international environment against religious extremism. A single stroke has ousted a predominant majority of traditional politicians and bigwigs and many feudals from the electoral field, a tally exceedingly more than the National Accountability Bureau [NAB] has disqualified over the past two years by using all the sources and resources at its command. It is a great purge, and many politicians flexing their muscles to contest the next elections are checking their educational certificates and some of them are planning to consult the federal government's equivalence board to establish that the foreign degrees they possess are no less qualifications than Pakistan's Bachelor of Arts, Commerce or Science [BA, BSc, B Com] to qualify to stand in the next polls. A cursory look at the educational qualifications of the former legislators, most of whom were poised to contest again and win, show that even several ex-federal and provincial ministers were not graduates. In the last 217-member National Assembly, only 80 MNAs were graduates or possessed more qualifications. In the Senate, it was a different story as more than 80 per cent of its members were graduates or had more qualifications. In the last Punjab assembly, nearly 148 out of 248 MPAs had qualifications less than graduation. Similar was the state of the other three provincial assemblies. It was rare in the case of members from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas [FATA] to be graduate. As an unprecedented number of leading lights who have been dominating the political scene for the past many years will be affected by the qualification condition, opposition of all major political parties to the prescription of Lt-Gen [retd] Tanvir Hussain Naqvi, Chairman of the National Reconstruction Bureau, will gather momentum in the days to come. Though it is premature to hazard a guess that the government will lower the qualification requirement, it has the track record, in the words of an official, of good footwork to alter its decisions in the face of large-scale opposition. If the same qualification condition is applied to the provincial assembly candidates, its impact would be more devastating because the educational qualification standards are relatively lower in these legislatures. For example, in the last NWFP assembly, only 22 out of 83 members possessed the degrees of BA, or MA. Similarly, in Sindh, 56 out of 109 members were graduates or had done masters in different disciplines. The rural areas that have a few noteworthy candidates to contest will be especially affected by the qualification prescription. The second most important government decision pertaining to the revival of the joint electorate system that has been rejoiced by minorities will in fact reduce the actual number of their members in the central and provincial legislatures at the end of the day. They will be elected only if they will be given nominations by the major political parties. There is hardly any constituency in the whole of Pakistan where the minorities' voters are in majority as against the Muslims. Now, a non-Muslim can contest any seat as a Muslim does and the reserved seats for the minorities stand abolished with the introduction of the joint electorate system. A big advantage that the minorities' candidates will have in the next general elections is that they will not have to travel from Khyber to Karachi and shell out a lot to seek votes as the whole of Pakistan was their constituency under the separate electorate system. As compared to the national assembly, the minorities' candidates will have better chances to return in a good number [but less than their reserved seats] in the provincial assemblies because of the constituencies being relatively small than those of the national assembly. While some political parties have been demanding joint electorate, religious parties have been strongly insisting on the continuation of the separate electorate. By scrapping the separate electorate, General Musharraf has buried another key decision of his military predecessor, General Ziaul Haq, who had brought it in the system on the demand of the religious lobby with which he was obsessed too much. Way back in 1906 when the Muslim League was formed, it had demanded separate electorate because the Muslims were in minority in India. The idea behind its demand was to have Muslims' representation according to their population and not let majority Hindus to have the whole control in important forums.