Pakistan: The status quo remains for Ahmadis

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Not only has the Election Commission continued to discriminate against Ahmadis, but also exposed them to more perils. It ordered that a separate electoral list be prepared only for Ahmadis.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: The News | Pakistan
By Bilal Farooqi | April 28, 2013

Once more, Pakistan’s Ahmadiyya community sit back and watch while others vote

For more than three decades, they have not dropped a vote down the slit of a ballot box — at least not until renouncing their faith. Ironically, even the man who had so diligently fought the case for their rights 20 years ago was unable to set the wrongs right for the General Elections 2013.  But given the past disappointments, expecting anything else would have been overoptimistic.

It was the present Chief Election Commissioner, Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim, who was the counsel for the five appellants belonging to the Ahmadiyya community in the 1993 Zaheeruddin case. The five Ahmadis — Zaheeruddin, Abdur Rehman, Majid, Rafi Ahmad and Muhammad Hayat — had appealed before the apex court against the sentences handed down to them for wearing badges bearing the kalima and claiming to be Muslims.

They were convicted under the controversial Ordinance XX promulgated by the military ruler General Ziaul Haq in 1984, targeting the Ahmadiyya community.

Ebrahim had presented a strong argument before the court. He had submitted that Ordinance XX was “oppressively unjust, abominably vague, perverse, discriminatory, produce of biased mind, so mala fide and wholly unconstitutional being violative of Articles 19, 20 and 25 of the Constitution”. According to him, imposing restrictions on the Ahmadis’ “religious practices, utterances and beliefs” violated the right to speech, profess and practice one’s faith and amounted to serious discrimination.

However, the court had upheld the sentences and declared the ordinance in accordance with the Constitution.  Two decades later, not even Ebrahim as the Chief Election Commissioner could turn things around.

A delegation of Ahmadis met with Ebrahim and other officials, but the system that makes the community members choose between their faith and the right to vote still remains in place. Disappointed, they boycotted the upcoming polls. “We wrote letters [for changing the system] to the authorities in 2007 too but to no avail,” said Saleemuddin, the spokesperson for the community, adding, “It is no different this time round. Our appeals have been ignored for years.”

Separate electoral list

Not only has the Election Commission continued to discriminate against Ahmadis, but also exposed them to more perils. It ordered that a separate electoral list be prepared only for Ahmadis. The nominal rolls it published contain the community members’ latest addresses, turning them into sitting ducks for the modern-day witch-hunters.

The brief reintroduction of the joint electorate system in the country in 2002 had led many to believe that there was hope after all. It had brought an end to the system imposed by General Ziaul Haq in 1985 under which separate electoral lists were prepared for different religious groups.

But that never happened. A few days after the joint electorate system was reintroduced, the then President General Pervez Musharraf caved in to the demands of hardline clerics and promulgated the Chief Executive Order 15 of 2002, inserting Articles 7B and 7C in the Conduct of General Elections Order, 2002. The first article enforced that the status of Ahmadis was to remain unchanged despite the Conduct of General Elections Order 2002. The second required the voters to sign a declaration that Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was the last of the prophets. Those who refused to sign it were to be deleted from the joint electoral rolls and added to a supplementary list of voters in the same electoral area as non-Muslims.

So the joint electorate system never made a comeback in the true sense.

No option

The Ahmadis cannot sign the declaration because of their religious beliefs. The other option for them — the one they are unwilling to take — is to list themselves as non-Muslims. For the 2002 elections, the Election Commission had introduced two separate forms for the registration of voters — Form 2 for Muslims and Form 8 for Non-Muslims. Ahmadis could only apply through Form 8. Now, there is no Form 8 and Form 2 has been redesigned for the registration of all voters.

But there is a catch. The applicants have to tick one of the boxes in the new form to indicate their religion. Those who tick themselves as Muslims have to sign a declaration on the form that they are not Ahmadis and do not share the religious beliefs of that community.

In a nutshell, the Ahmadiyya community has been strategically kept deprived of their right to vote. “The Form 8 has been kept unchanged for the upcoming elections,” said Saleemuddin. “Everything remains the same.”

Another dead end

A couple of month ago, the Supreme Court had started hearing of petition submitted in 2007 against the two articles inserted by Pervez Musharraf in the election law. Later, the court made it clear that the decision would be made in the light of the constitutional provisions and principles laid down in the Zaheeruddin case verdict —  apparently another dead end for the Ahmadiyya community.



Read original post here: The status quo remains


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