ISLAMABAD: Federal Shariat Court Chief Justice Sardar Mohammad Raza Khan and retired Justices Tanvir Ahmed Khan and Tariq Pervez Khan emerged on Wednesday as consensus candidates of the government and the opposition for the office of chief election commissioner.

Their names have been formally sent to the parliamentary committee for final selection after completion of the consultation process between the government and the opposition.

The decision was announced by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Khursheed Ahmed Shah at a press briefing after their meeting at the Parliament House on Wednesday.

The parliamentary committee will hold a meeting on Thursday to finalise one of the names before Friday – the deadline set by the Supreme Court to fill the key constitutional office which has been lying vacant for over 16 months.

Mr Dar and Mr Shah claimed that they had finalised the names after consultations with other political parties, including the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf.

Mr Dar had been holding talks with Mr Shah on behalf of the prime minister, who is at present on a four-day visit to the UK and expected to return on Saturday.

The two leaders said that instead of sending separate lists of three candidates each to the parliamentary committee, they had succeeded in finalising three consensus names under Article 213(2A) of the Constitution.

Govt, opposition complete consultation process

Mr Shah said that before finalising the names they had talked to PTI’s Shah Mehmood Qureshi, MQM’s Dr Farooq Sattar, ANP President Asfandyar Wali, Jamaat-i-Islami Emir Sirajul Haq, Qaumi Watan Party chief Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, JUI-F leader Ghafoor Haideri and PkMAP chief Mehmood Khan Achakzai.

Without naming the PTI, Mr Shah alleged that the process of CEC’s nomination was delayed because of obstruction by one party.

“We consider all the nominees as respectable persons. The parliamentary committee will finalise the name by Thursday evening,” Mr Shah added.

In a statement, PTI’s Information Secretary Dr Shireen Mazari confirmed that the leader of opposition had talked to Mr Qureshi and informed him about the names of three candidates.

She said the party held “all the three gentlemen in the highest esteem”. But she said the PTI felt the appointment was insufficient in itself to establish independence of the Election Commission because the CEC was merely one among five commissioners.

She called for re-appointment of all four members of the commission in an independent manner through consultations among major political parties. The PTI wanted reforms in the ECP so that it could become a “truly independent body with punitive powers”, she added.

The Supreme Court had warned the government that it would withdraw on Dec 5 its judge Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, who is working as acting CEC, if the office was not filled by that time.

Earlier, the court had set Oct 28, Nov 13 and Nov 25 as deadlines for CEC’s appointment.

But the issue remained unresolved. After a meeting on Nov 6, both the prime minister and the leader of opposition went abroad and could not hold direct consultation. Both sides blamed Imran Khan for the delay in appointment, saying that every candidate wanted to save himself from any controversy because of criticism by the PTI chief of previous nominees.

JILLANI, BHAGWANDAS TURN DOWN OFFER: The issue of CEC’s appointment suffered a blow when retired justices Tassaduq Hussain Jillani and Rana Bhagwandas, the two persons on whose names the government and the opposition had almost reached an agreement, declined to accept the offer.

Earlier, the leader of opposition rejected the government’s nominee, retired Justice Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui, and the prime minister the opposition’s nominee, retired Justice Mian Ajmal.

Rejecting all the names that came under discussion between Mr Sharif and Mr Shah, the protesting PTI proposed the name of retired Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid. But the PML-N and the PPP gave a cold shoulder to the PTI’s proposal.

Former Supreme Court judge Justice Tariq Pervez Khan is the only candidate who has survived in the final list after an elimination process that knocked out the other four candidates whose names had come under discussion during the first meeting between the prime minister and the leader of opposition on Nov 6.

According to the National Assembly secretariat’s notification, the 12-member bipartisan parliamentary committee, headed by PML-N Senator Rafiq Rajwana, will meet at the Parliament House at 11am on Thursday.

The committee is dominated by the PML-N and the PPP – the former has six and the latter three members in the committee.

The committee comprises Sardar Yaqoob Nasir, Arshad Khan Leghari, Dr Darshan, retired Capt Mohammad Safdar and Junaid Chaudhry of the PML-N, Islamuddin Sheikh, Shazia Marri and Ayaz Soomro of the PPP, Dr Farooq Sattar of the MQM, Haji Adeel of the ANP and Shaharyar Afridi of the PTI.

It is expected that the PTI’s lone member would boycott the meeting because his party was protesting the alleged rigging in the 2013 elections and its MNAs have already submitted their resignations.

The office of CEC fell vacant when retired Justice Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim voluntary tendered his resignation in July last year amid allegations of rigging and irregularities in the elections by almost all political parties.

Justice Ebrahim was the first man who was appointed as CEC after the passage of the 18th Amendment, under which the tenure of the office has been increased to five years from three.

Before the amendment, the president used to appoint the CEC, but under Article 213 of the Constitution, the prime minister in consultation with the leader of opposition is required to forward three names to the parliamentary committee for confirmation of one of them.

PROFILE: Justice Sardar Raza Khan, the incumbent Chief Justice of Federal Shariat Court, retired as judge of the Supreme Court in 2011. The 69-year-old was among the judges of the apex court who had refused to take oath under the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) after the imposition of emergency by then military ruler Pervez Musharraf in 2007.

Justice Raza, who belongs to Abbottabad in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was also a member of the bench headed by then chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry which gave a decision in the famous NRO case. He was the only member who gave a “partial dissenting note”.

Similarly, while hearing a petition challenging the PCO, Justice Raza was also not in favour of issuing contempt of court notices to the judges who had taken oath under the PCO.

Justice Tanveer Ahmed Khan, 75, retired as SC judge on Jan 16 this year. He served as a judge of the Lahore High Court from 1988 till his elevation to the SC in 2000.

He had conducted the trial of in Pan American hijacking case inside Rawalpindi’s Adiyala jail in the 1980s.

After his retirement, he served as chairman of the National Industrial Relations Commission from 2004 to 2007. Hailing from Lahore, Justice Tanvir Ahmed served as director general of the Punjab Judicial Academy from Aug 2008 to March 2013.

Before becoming a judge, he had served as additional advocate general of Punjab in 1984.

Justice Tariq Pervez Khan was chief justice of the Peshawar High Court when Gen Musharraf imposed emergency in 2007. He was later elevated to the Supreme Court after his restoration along with CJP Iftikhar Chaudhry. He retired as SC judge in February last year.

He also served as acting chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa during the caretaker set-up last year.

Published in Dawn December 4th , 2014