HYDERABAD, Aug 26: Fo-rmer Supreme Court judge Mr. Nasir Aslam Zahid has said that even if the president got himself re-elected for the second term he would have to doff his uniform “but I personally believe that he can’t contest elections either with or without the uniform.” Speaking to journalists after attending a conference on the “Protection of Rights of Vulnerable Children”, organised by the Society for Protection of Rights of Child (SPARC) at a hotel on Saturday, Mr Zahid said that since the president was not elected under proper constitutional provisions, article 41(4) of the constitution would not be applicable to his election. Article 41(4) defines the time when the president’s election will be held while the schedule-II defines the size and qualification of president’s electoral college.

The president was elected in 2002 under article 41(7) and article 41(8), which had been inserted into the constitution after Supreme Court’s verdict of May 12, 2000, validating the military takeover of October 1999 in Zafar Ali Shah case, he said.

The former judge expressed surprise at the fact that article 41(9) defined that article 41(7) and 41 (8) would not be applicable to any other president. The government insisted that the president’s election was to be held between Sept 15 and Oct 15 as per procedure laid down in article 41(4) but “I feel that when the president was not elected the way he should have been elected, article 41(4) will not apply to him,” he said.

He said that according to article 41(4) the president’s election should take place not before 60 days and not later than 30 days before his term expired. When the present assembly had already given him vote of confidence for five years how could it again elect him when its own tenure would be over, he questioned.

The constitution’s schedule II put it in clear terms that only a new assembly would elect the president whose expiry of term would coincide with the president’s term.

The former judge said that if this assembly elected the president for the second term it would mean that the new assembly would not have the right to elect president for its own five year term.

He expressed the hope that the moment president’s election was announced A.K. Dogar of Pakistan Lawyers Forum would challenge it in the apex court. The schedule for president’s election would be announced in the first week of September, he said.

He said that under article 41(4) president’s elections could be adjourned if the electoral college was not complete. In case Muttahida Majils-i-Amal opted for dissolution of one or two assemblies it would also render electoral college incomplete, he said.

He said that Supreme Court could review its own verdicts. Even in the US and India Supreme Courts could review or change their verdicts if they deemed them wrong, he said.

The former judge, in answer to queries that government might clip the court’s suo motu powers through a constitutional amendment, said that the move would have little affect on the Supreme Court because it could convert any letter into a writ petition on any matter.

“I had been doing the same to take cognisance of public interest issues when I was chief justice of Sindh High Court,” he remarked.

He said that the Supreme Court had institutionalised the mechanism for taking suo motu action in different matters and it was currently dealing with 400 applications a day.

No federal minister raised eyebrows when the judiciary was giving judgements in the government’s support but now Dr. Sher Afgan had accused the judiciary of partisanship. The government said it had accepted recent court verdicts but what Afgan was saying was contemptuous, the former judge said.

“Today, the apex court stands like a rock to provide justice to people,” he said and added that the real issue was access to justice, which also included civic and socio-economic justice.

He believed that unless Supreme Courts in South Asian countries came forward to take notice of people’s issues they would remain unresolved and deplored that no government had made any headway with implementation of Juvenile Justice System Ordinance (JJSO).