Editorial
Honest and competent candidate for election
EC gets legal mandate to insist on it
With the Supreme Court rejecting the appeal against High Court ruling requiring candidates to submit eight items of personal information to the EC to qualify for nomination, HC's verdict now stands to be implemented. The civil society and the media's relentless campaign for clean, honest and competent candidates for the national elections is vindicated through a legal process.
Although during the BNP-led four-party coalition government intrusive attempts were made to subvert the original writ petition, the final outcome comes through as very positive by virtue of the Supreme Court ruling.
It is indeed worthwhile to note the types of information required to be submitted by candidates to the EC in affidavit form: candidate's educational qualification, any criminal case lying against him/her, any previous criminal case with or without conviction, profession, source of income, was an MP before (if so, his/her account of fulfilling commitments), any outstanding bank loan and status of repayment.
How crucial these information are towards making informed choices of public representatives is borne out by the dearth of honest, clean and competent MPs in the previous parliaments and the state of criminalisation of politics with money and muscle power.
It is a major step towards transparency of the electoral process at the very primary stage of candidate selection. The message is clear for the political parties to absorb and internalise: they have now to shun the practice of nomination selling that spawned criminality in the whole political structure. Instead, they must give their party tickets to carefully chosen candidates that meet the EC criteria.
Getting information, however, about candidates is a necessary condition but not by itself sufficient one. Unless the whole set of political and electoral reforms are put in place, the totality of impact on the type of election and the kind of government that the people want will remain elusive. Eleven months have gone by; yet, the political parties do not seem keen on reforming themselves, except to be focussed on the two leaders of the country. For the government's part, however, there is pressing need for allowing open politics for things to take shape and engine of the reform process to move forward.
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