KARACHI, Oct 25: The Sindh High Court accepted on Thursday Pakistan People’s Party Chairperson Benazir Bhutto’s petition against a 2004 Election Commission notification sanctioning the merger of PPP (Sherpao) and PPP (Patriots) and certifying the merged groups as ‘the PPP’.
As the petition, moved in 2004, came up for final hearing, Advocate M. Zahid Khan informed a division bench comprising Chief Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed and Justice Sajjad Ali Shah that the PPP (Sherpao) and the PPP (Patriots) had since decided to part ways and revert to their old identities.
An intimation of ‘de-merger’ has been sent to the Election Commission which has taken no action on it in view of the high court proceedings.
Appearing for the petitioner, Advocate Farooq H. Naek submitted that the PPP was founded in 1967 and had retained its identity since. It was indelibly associated in the minds of the people with Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, who served twice as prime minister. Any attempt by any group or groups to usurp the name and have it formally approved by the Election Commission was aimed at political deception, he argued.
Due to promulgation of the Political Parties Order, 2002, in place of the Political Parties Act, 1962, and other legislative curbs and manipulations, Mr Naek said, the PPP decided to contest the 2002 general election as the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians. The party, however, retained its election symbol of ‘arrow’. Yet the Election Commission chose to sanction the merger of PPP (Sherpao) and PPP (Patriots) as ‘the PPP’.
The EC said in its brief reply that no mala fides were involved and that the merged groups were certified as ‘PPP’ because no other party came forward to claim the name or to challenge the merger of two groups under the banner of PPP.
Deputy Attorney-General Rizwan Ahmed Siddiqui said the EC acted in accordance with the law (the Political Parties Order, 2000), which empowered it in this behalf.
Allowing the petition, the bench ruled that the Election Commission had no authority to sanction the merger or certify the merged groups as the Pakistan People’s Party.
