The judgment
This refers to the articles that were published on August 2 – ‘Moving beyond Panamagate’ by Umar Gilani, and ‘No easy answers’ by Dr Abdul Razzaq. All mega corruption scandals are supplemented by leaders of ruling parties. If one has luxury flats in England, the other has palaces in France. Why is there a hue and cry about lacuna in legal prices when you can simply submit the money trail.
Rather than protecting the accused in the name of democracy, our legal experts should recommend the introduction of legislation that could prevent public officeholders to misuse their authority for personal or party gains through mega contracts, public sector enterprises and appointments. Unless this is done national resources will continue to be squandered. But who will bell the cat?
Abdul Majeed (Islamabad)
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It is time that all liberal political forces joined hands and abolished Article 62 and Article 63 that were added in the constitution during the Zia era. Both these clauses make it compulsory for all legislatures to have people who are ‘sadiq’ and ‘ameen’.
This raises one question: Why should we make those attributes compulsory only for legislatures? Why shouldn’t we apply them to bureaucrats, judges, generals and people who belong to other walk of life? In my opinion, the implementation of Article 62 and Article 63 is not only impracticable, but it hangs a sword of Damocles on the heads of elected legislature who can be conveniently disqualified by the all-encompassing scope of these two articles.
Akbar Jan Marwat (Islamabad)