18 October 2004	Monday	03 Ramazan 1425

PESHAWAR, Oct 17: Three candidates are running vigorous campaigns ahead of the elections for the top slot of the Supreme Court Bar Association.

Senior members of the Bar told Dawn that the elections had assumed greater significance in the wake of President Pervez Musharraf's decision to retain his uniform as the legal fraternity appeared to be focussing its attention on the issue.

About 1,400 members of the association, mostly from Punjab, would exercise their right to vote during the polls scheduled for Oct 23.

The president of the association is elected on a rotational and this time around it is the turn of the NWFP.

A former attorney-general and prominent constitutional expert Qazi Mohammad Jamil is competing against advocates Mohammad Saeed Beg and Mohammad Zahoor Qureshi. Advocate Lateef Yousafzai has already been elected unopposed as vice-president from the NWFP.

The candidates are specially focussing on Punjab and Sindh for their campaign as most of the voters belong to these two provinces. The association's incumbent president, Justice (retd) Tariq Mahmood belongs to Balochistan. Hamid Khan had been elected president before him from Punjab.

During their respective tenures, both Hamid Khan and Tariq Mahmood publicly supported the struggle for upholding the supremacy of the constitution. Both of them led the lawyers' movement community against the Legal Framework Order besides calling for the restoration of true democratic order in the country.

Polling stations would be set up in Karachi, Lahore, Multan, Bahalwalpur, Islamabad, Quetta and Peshawar.

The number of voters in Lahore, Bahawalpur and Multan is about 700, 100 and 38, respectively. Similarly, there are about 100 voters each in the NWFP and Balochistan while more than 250 voters are registered in Sindh.

Senior lawyers here believe that the chances of Qazi Mohammad Jamil, who is also a former judge of the Peshawar High Court, are bright by comparison with the other two candidates as he enjoys the support of all major groups in Punjab and Sindh. They believe that it will be for the first time that lawyers in Punjab would be supporting a candidate irrespective of his group affiliation.

Mr Jamil has the distinction of holding the post of the president of the Peshawar High Court Bar Association on various occasions. During his tenure as a high court judge, he has to his credit three important judgments. He was on the bench which declared the dissolution of the governor's move to dissolve the NWFP Assembly unconstitutional in 1990.

He was also on the bench when the Provincially-Administered Tribal Areas Regulations of 1975 were declared unconstitutional. Similarly, in he had also declared the trial of civilians by military courts illegal and unconstitutional.

He was serving as an additional judge of the high court and was not confirmed by the then president Ghulam Ishaq Khan in 1990 after the high court delivered the verdict in the NWFP dissolution case.

Mohammad Saeed Beg has also served as president of the Peshawar High Court Bar Association. He was affiliated with the Pakistan Muslim League-N. During his election campaign, he has also toured different cities and is confident about the outcome of the election to be in his favour.

The third candidate, Mohammad Zahoor Qureshi, is also a senior lawyer associated with Pakistan People's Party. He is known for his literary tastes and regularly participates in mushairas and other such programmes.