ISLAMABAD, Aug 7: A serious “typo” in the Political Parties Order(PPO), which was discovered only recently, is causing a lot of embarrassment to the government, and the “affected” parties seem to be sharpening their legal knives to turn the PPO on its head.

The Chief Executive Order No 18 2002 issued by President Gen Pervez Musharraf under the PCO 1 on June 28, 2002 says: “Whereas it is expedient to provide for deformation and regulation of political parties....the Chief Executive of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is pleased to make the following (Political Parties Order, 2002) order.”

The order, which was drafted by the National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB), bears the president’s signatures.

When contacted, senior NRB officials said the use of the word “deformation” was a typographical error, and the entire spirit of the order to reform the political system should be kept in mind while going through it. They did not say what was the word they had wanted to use in place of “deformation”. Two of the senior officials who said it was a typographical error requested not to be named.

The glaring “typo” in the Political Parties Order 2002, was missed even by the law ministry while vetting the NRB draft and then by the president secretariat.

(New Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language Deluxe Encyclopaedic Edition defines deformation as a change in form, especially one for the worse!)

The Political Parties Order 2002, has hit the two major political parties for the worse. PML-N was forced to elect brother of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif as head of the party. As a consequence of the same order, the PPP formed the PPP Parliamentary Group with Makhdoom Amin Fahim as its head, and the self-exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto continues as PPP chairperson.

Both the parties changed their party leaders to avoid en bloc disqualification from the October elections under the same order.

When contacted, senior vice-president PML-N and advocate of Supreme Court, Syed Zafar Ali Shah told Dawn that the use of the word “deformation” in the order to revise, consolidate and re-enact the law relating to political parties amounts to an admission of pre-election rigging in a Presidential Order and spells out the government’s intent in very clear words.

Project Coordinator of a German donor NGO doing political advocacy in Pakistan, Friedrich Naumman Stiftung, Zafarullah Khan, questioned if the word “deformation” in the Order is a Freudian Slip or a confession of reality by the government. “I don’t think it’s a Freudian Slip. It is a confession of reality,” he said.

An advocate of Supreme Court and Pakistan Peoples Party leader, Dr Babar Awan said an idea of the extent of the government’s pre-poll rigging could be gathered from the targeted legislation which he added was aimed at hunting down specific political parties and their leaders, as also from the massive transfers in Punjab and Sindh.

Dr Awan said, unfortunately, the Supreme Court has not taken note of this. He said the government by doing retrospective legislation has violated the Constitution and the fundamental rights enshrined in it, according to which any law, usage, custom or tradition abridging or offending it is “void ab initio” and ultra-constitutional.

Dr Awan said the government was adopting measures of temporary legislation to oust the popular leadership and to bring its own cronies into power.