August 27, 2007	Monday	Sha’aban 13, 1428

LAHORE, Aug 26: The Pakistan Christian National Party (PCNP) has filed a constitutional petition in the Supreme Court seeking to amend the 1973 Constitution in a way as to remove all the articles from the basic law which are ‘anomalous’ in nature because of their discriminatory character.

The PCNP submitted the petition to the apex court’s Lahore registry on Saturday seeking deletion of Article 41-2 in particular which provided for only a Muslim citizen to be the president of Pakistan.

It said that this provision was in conflict with the fundamental rights enshrined in articles 16, 17, 18, 19, 25 and 26 of the 1973 Constitution.

PCNP chairperson Joseph M. Francis, who is the petitioner ‘as an aggrieved person’ because he intends to contest the presidential election against Gen

Pervez Musharraf, told a news conference at the Lahore press club on Sunday that he had also submitted a miscellaneous application along with the constitutional petition requesting the apex court to stay the president’s election till such time that his petition was adjudicated.Mr Joseph said that he had also challenged the veracity of articles 2 and 31 of the Constitution because it provided for Islam to be the state religion and Islamic way of life which also deprived non-Muslim citizens of their fundamental rights.

He said that article 41-2 was also anomalous in nature because it had an inherent conflict by providing without any restriction that any citizen qualified to be elected to the national and provincial assemblies, was qualified to contest for the office of the president, but on the other hand it was restraining a non-Muslim to be a candidate for the president’s office.

He said that the PCNP had nominated him as the presidential candidate in the light of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1992, which all member states, including Pakistan, were obliged to obey.

Similarly, the PCNP’s decision of his nomination was consistent with the first speech delivered by Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah in the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, in which the founding father had enunciated Pakistan’s policy of secularism and which was the guiding philosophy and driving force behind the Constitution as enforced on March 23, 1973.

He also cited the last sermon delivered by the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) on Hajjatul Wida saying that the Islamic principles also enunciated a society where the beliefs of non-Muslim minorities were respected and where there was no discrimination on the basis of religion.