HYDERABAD, Dec 10: Justice (Retd) Wajihuddin Ahmed said on Monday that elections under a partisan election commission would be nothing but ‘a joke with the nation’ and the political parties would be committing suicide if they became part of the ‘futile exercise’.

Speaking at a conference on “Land Reforms and Democracy” organised by the Joint Action Committee (JAC) to mark the International Human Rights Day at the press club, the retired justice said that people should boycott elections because the exercise would bring them no good.

He continued his speech amid interruption by power shutdowns saying that “People are talking about democracy and election but it’s a joke with them and tantamount to adding insult to injury,” and any political party which participated in elections would be committing suicide.

“Entire civil society including lawyers, journalists and members of general public don’t recognise these elections. That’s why we have announced boycott of the futile polls,” he said.

Mr Ahmed said that the Jan 8 elections would be a repeat of post-2002 situation and the representatives elected after the polls would deliver nothing.

He criticised non-payment of salaries to the employees of Hyderabad Development Authority and said that the day was not far when the Industrial Relations Ordinance (IRO) 2002 would be revoked, trade unionism would be revived and employees would be allowed to have a share in the employer’s investment.

He said that quality education was essential for all and vowed that Pakistan would be transformed into a welfare state as envisioned by Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah in his Aug 11, 1947 speech.

He said that secondary, higher secondary and higher education would be top priority of the welfare state and people would get employment.

If someone failed to get a job he would be entitled to scholarship. “We don’t have public transport system and people frequently lose their lives while traveling on the roofs of trains and buses,” he said.

He came down hard on the mushrooming of leasing and car financing sector of banks and feared all these cars would in no time turn into taxies because people were not able to pay installments.

He referred to higher mortality rate among mothers at the time of delivery due to inadequate health facilities and said that “these tasks are not difficult to achieve.”

He slammed people who earned huge proceeds without cultivating lands themselves. “In our religion such proceed is Riba (interest based income) if the landowners don’t cultivate land with their own hands,” he said.

Expressing disappointment over lack of implementation of land reforms, the retired justice said that the day was not far when every peasant would have his own land. Today, poverty had become a crime but the welfare state would eliminate the evil once and for all, he observed.

He predicted that the candidates to be elected in Jan 8 elections would not be able to work beyond six months or a year and then they would be replaced by genuine representatives of people.

Mr Ahmed told journalists after the conference that there was no rule of law in the country. The president knew that he himself was taking oath under 1973 Constitution while judges were taking oath under the PCO, which meant sheer dictatorship and no constitutionalism, he said.

To a question he said that the parliament had the authority to reinstate the deposed judges of higher and supreme courts provided that it had the will to exercise its powers.

He stressed: “No! we including civil society and lawyers don’t accept the PCO judges because they are not judges”.

Asked why the lawyers and he himself did not press for the reinstatement of judges who did not take oath under the PCO in 1999, Mr Ahmed said that that the situation at that time was quite different and he himself was one of the judges who did not take oath under that PCO.