Why it is important to follow the constitution, despite its imperfections

jasos · August 23, 2014, 5:37am

Re: Why it is important to follow the constitution, despite its imperfections

@Sa1eem

I’ll respond to the two main points you raised.

(1) You claim that most of the elected members should have been disqualified from running based on article 62

My answer:

Article 62 (and 63) are poorly conceived and written. But even then, such qualification tests were indeed applied and as you may remember were the butt of many jokes.

The results of these judgments were inconsistent and sometimes ludicrous, but the process was followed. The inconsistency did arise from the fact that the qualification criteria wasn’t just limited to “proven” disqualifications, such as prior felonies or convictions from a court, rather had some subjective criteria built in that was applied differently by different officers. How do you judge “good moral character” in a matter of days. Who issues such certificates? If you run for office, and I claim that you are of poor moral character because you write long posts on gupshup, should the authorities disqualify you?

In the end, your judgement that most of the assembly members shouldn’t have qualified is YOUR subjective judgement. Disqualification through subjective judgement is a very convenient tool to get engineered result and is used most often in Iran.

I think as part of future reforms, the qualification should be made objective and not subjective so we don’t have the comedy of candidates being asked to recite Quranic versus in courts. Last I checked the judgement of who is a “good” muslim was supposed to rest with God himself. But until these changes are made, these are the rules everybody AGREED to play under.

(2) Your complaints about the FIR (or lack thereof ) about the Model town incident

My answer:

Let’s be intellectually honest. That’s not why Qadri and Imran are protesting, they had planned their protests prior to this mishandling by the Punjab government.

If the FIR is not being handled in a just manner, the legal recourse is to appeal to the court, which just made a decision favorable to Qadri’s stance, and the government has x number of days to either accept or appeal the judgement. So the process seems to be working, and both sides have the ability to future appeals as well.

If the process described above is not to the satisfaction of Qadri and company, the entity to protest against would be Punjab government. Though I won’t agree with it, it will be somewhat justifiable for them to stage a dharna in front of Punjab assembly and ask for resignation of the CM on the basis of 'moral responsibility." But staging a mob in Islamabad and asking for the dissolution of all assemblies, National and provincial has no justification.

han jee salem bhai hamein impress kartey rahtey lambi lambi angraizi post sey ab jawab dain