LAHORE, Sept 7: The Pakistan Lawyers Forum (PLF) has filed a fresh petition in the Supreme Court to stop Gen Pervez Musharraf from contesting the presidential elections, here on Friday.

“We had filed a similar petition on March 31, 2007, in Lahore registry of the Supreme Court, which was dispatched to the court’s Principal Seat at Islamabad but it is unfortunate that the petition went missing from the Supreme Court’s record and is never fixed for hearing till to-date,” PLF counsel AK Dogar said.

The lawyer said he had to file a review petition after the PLF’s main petition against the 17th Amendment was dismissed in order to plead before the apex court to stop Musharraf from contesting presidential elections.

He said after over seven years of unconstitutional governance, Gen Musharraf again wanted to contest presidential polls under Article 41 (2) of the Constitution.

Mr Dogar said the article required that a candidate to the presidential polls must be qualified to be elected as member of the National Assembly under Article 62 and should not suffer from any disqualification under Article 63 of the Constitution. The purpose and object of Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution was to exclude delinquent, dishonest and violators of law and of the Constitution from the election process, he added.

“It is unthinkable that a person who was guilty of subversion of the Constitution by misuse of armed forces specially when had taken oath to defend the Constitution, will aspire to be elected as president of the republic under the same Constitution,” he said.

He said the Supreme Court while interpreting Article 63 (1) (d) held that President to Hold Another Office Act 2003 was a ‘law’, which declared that holding of office of Chief of Army Staff did not disqualify General Musharraf from being or remaining the president of Pakistan.

“But this is a faulty judgment because number of precedents of the superior courts have escaped the notice of the apex court, including Marbury versus Medison and Ahad Sharif cases, which hold that if Constitution and a law are applicable to the same subject, the Constitution will have preponderance and not the subordinate law,” the lawyer said.

Mr Dogar said if the word ‘law’ used in clause (1) (d) of Article 63 is interpreted to mean the subordinate law, the entire clause became inoperative, ineffective and redundant because such a law could not override the Constitution.