PESHAWAR, Oct 4: The presidential candidate of lawyers, Justice (retd) Wajihuddin Ahmed, said on Thursday that he had very bright chances of success if the president were to be elected by new electoral college.
He said the incumbent assemblies had no constitutional right to elect a president when their tenure was about to end.
Addressing a large meeting of lawyers held by the Peshawar High Court Bar Association, Justice Wajihuddin said the Election Commission had been made irrelevant in the presidential election through constitutional amendments like the Eighth Amendment, Legal Framework Order and the 17th Amendment and only the chief election commissioner was empowered to conduct it.
“It is easy to manoeuvre and influence one person rather then the Election Commission,” he said, adding that the CEC had amended the Presidential Election Rules of 1988 in a clandestine manner and even a notification was not issued in this regard.
He said the CEC had no power to remove the provisions of disqualification from rules as it amounted to amending the Constitution.
If the CEC wanted to show a little grace after extending many favours to President Pervez Musharraf, he should maintain the secrecy of ballot in the polls, he said.
“The CEC and presiding officers should ensure that no secret cameras are installed and the voters are not allowed to carry cellular phones inside the polling stations,” he said. If people remained silent, courts would be delivering judgments like the one given in the Maulvi Tamizuddin case.
About annoyance expressed by a larger bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday over his speech to lawyers in Rawalpindi, he said the bench had asked the lawyers’ counsel to clarify whether he had confidence in it. “I have no power to give a certificate to the court. Constructive criticism of judgments which attain finality is a right of me, as well as every other individual,” he maintained.
He told the lawyers that their case before the apex court was very strong as the Constitution was clear about the disqualification of Gen Musharraf.
Justice Wajihuddin said the political situation in the country was very fluid as some people said they had an overpowering majority, some said they would resign from the electoral college and others said they would either resign or abstain from voting. “In such conditions if the lawyers had not filled the vacuum and fielded a candidate, Gen Musharraf would have emerged elected unopposed,” he said, adding that they were now in a better position to continue the battle in courts as well as on the streets.
He said Gen Musharraf wanted to turn the tribal areas and the NWFP into another Tora Bora and he had promoted extremism.
The former Supreme Court justice spelled out his election manifesto, stating that he wanted to turn Pakistan into a welfare state as envisaged by Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. He said the impediments in the way of the goal were the civil and military bureaucracy and corrupt politicians.
He said he would reduce taxation which directly affected poor people, like taxes on petroleum products and electricity, and bring into the tax net sectors like the stock exchange.
He highlighted the importance of strengthening school education. The government had been spending funds on higher education while ignoring the basic education system, he said.
PHCBA President Lateef Afridi and General Secretary Ishtiaq Ibrahim announced that Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan would be the consensus candidate of lawyers of the province for the forthcoming election of the Supreme Court Bar Association.
SCBA President Munir A. Malik said: “We respect the martyrs who have sacrificed their lives for the country but we can’t extend the same respect to the generals who have abrogated the Constitution.”
PESHAWAR, Oct 4: The presidential candidate of lawyers, Justice (retd) Wajihuddin Ahmed, said on Thursday that he had very bright chances of success if the president were to be elected by new electoral college.
