Election candidates:Enforcing an uniform standard
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
Md Alimullah
MANY candidates who got clearance from the Election Commission (EC) for contesting the municipal polls were reported to be accused in criminal cases. The added, amended or newly drawn up rules of the Election Commission (EC) related to the eligibility of candidates for elections at any level, have not created any bars for disqualifying such candidates. This may have been due to the practice in the past that only accusation in criminal cases do not make a person a criminal to be considered as unfit for holding an elected public position. Only upon successful conviction in a case, a person may be considered as having a proved crime background that would make him or her ineligible.
But it is high time that EC should be addressing this issue with the promptness that it deserves and suitably change the laws or make the same unambiguous. For example, what would happen to persons who may get elected but also subsequently convicted in criminal cases ? In that case, would they be required to vacate their seats requiring fresh elections to fill the vacant positions ? This would surely be a bothersome process. Besides, on getting elected, these persons may use their official positions to influence or prejudice the legal process in their favour in the cases to get acquitted.
Thus, would it not be best to bar persons for election regardless of whether they are accused ones or convicted ones in criminal cases ? As it is, chances of many of them, as the public perception goes, becoming convicted in varying degrees are likely. Therefore, it should be prudent to create an uniform standard and keep out persons of undesirable background from standing in election for the public good.
Setting such a standard will be all the more necessary to keep some of the bigwigs in politics who have been accused for corruption and other crimes from contesting the parliamentary elections. They can be expected to try everything to drag the legal process so that their convictions in different cases remain unsettled at the time of submitting forms for contesting in the parliamentary election and to utilise the existing rule that none can be barred from contesting before their actual conviction. But would that be fair on the voters who have been promised all this while that the coming national elections would be very different in the sense of presenting a choice of clean candidates only who have not been tainted by backgrounds or allegations of crime and corruption?
MANY candidates who got clearance from the Election Commission (EC) for contesting the municipal polls were reported to be accused in criminal cases. The added, amended or newly drawn up rules of the Election Commission (EC) related to the eligibility of candidates for elections at any level, have not created any bars for disqualifying such candidates. This may have been due to the practice in the past that only accusation in criminal cases do not make a person a criminal to be considered as unfit for holding an elected public position. Only upon successful conviction in a case, a person may be considered as having a proved crime background that would make him or her ineligible.
But it is high time that EC should be addressing this issue with the promptness that it deserves and suitably change the laws or make the same unambiguous. For example, what would happen to persons who may get elected but also subsequently convicted in criminal cases ? In that case, would they be required to vacate their seats requiring fresh elections to fill the vacant positions ? This would surely be a bothersome process. Besides, on getting elected, these persons may use their official positions to influence or prejudice the legal process in their favour in the cases to get acquitted.
Thus, would it not be best to bar persons for election regardless of whether they are accused ones or convicted ones in criminal cases ? As it is, chances of many of them, as the public perception goes, becoming convicted in varying degrees are likely. Therefore, it should be prudent to create an uniform standard and keep out persons of undesirable background from standing in election for the public good.
Setting such a standard will be all the more necessary to keep some of the bigwigs in politics who have been accused for corruption and other crimes from contesting the parliamentary elections. They can be expected to try everything to drag the legal process so that their convictions in different cases remain unsettled at the time of submitting forms for contesting in the parliamentary election and to utilise the existing rule that none can be barred from contesting before their actual conviction. But would that be fair on the voters who have been promised all this while that the coming national elections would be very different in the sense of presenting a choice of clean candidates only who have not been tainted by backgrounds or allegations of crime and corruption?