One may question as to its intent and purpose
With elections being only four weeks away, parties are gunning for victories in their stronghold, and in certain cases they expect to encroach upon others’ strongholds, but none of this would have been possible if some of their prominent candidates were barred from entering the fray under one reason or the other. A situation of the same nature happened in the past few days when some of the ECP officials scrutinising the candidates decided to implement articles 62 and 63 of the constitution in a more literal sense. Quite a few leaders of the mainstream parties were disqualified from running for a seat in the legislatures on various issues, Ch Nisar of the PML-N and Jamshed Dasti of the PPP included.
Though one cannot blame the Returning Officers (ROs) for they were doing their duty, one expected that a better sense should have prevailed and issues that had no standing in the long run, or the ones that had no basis of concern at all, were avoided in the first place, thus giving the process of scrutiny a better credibility. There were instances showing a disregard to the basic understanding of what the politicians deliver and what the politics stands for: a public service, may be the greatest of them all, and representation of the will of the public, respectively.
Now that Jamshed Dasti and Ch Nisar have been given a green signal to contest elections, both the main parties are gunning for a mandate that would take them to treasury benches. However, questions must be asked as to what was the purpose of putting some of the politicians through all this while some with convictions and pending cases were approved at all. The critics of the noble gesture of putting a scrutiny check at the source would surely point out the irony of the situation. What the ECP should have really done was that it should have asked the candidates to provide it with the details of their and that of their family members’ financial assets. Then these assets should have been put through a process of investigation that is known as financial forensics to verify their claims. This alone would have helped in keeping the loan defaulters, corrupt and otherwise financial embezzlers away from entering the political scene. Sadly, their financial claims were taken on their face value, thus giving them an opportunity to manipulate the process of scrutiny. As far as the articles 62 and 63 are concerned, they are ambiguous and should always be applied not in their literal sense but more as guiding principles. Of course, the debate on what justifies these articles’ insertion into the constitution is a much bigger question, and begs attention to be addressed.