When the fourth deadline of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for the submission of affidavits on dual nationality expired on Friday, 20 lawmakers had not submitted them. 18 had simply not submitted them, while two MNAs said they had foreign nationality by virtue of having been born abroad to Pakistani parents. The ECP will meet to proceed in the light of the Supreme Court ruling directing it to take action. The 18 legislators, comprising nine MNAs, five MPAs and four Senators cannot claim there was not enough time to file the affidavits, for the first deadline set by the ECP was on October 1, of a week, then on October 9, it extended the date till the end of the month, granting a further extension till November 9. After that, the ECP again extended the deadline to November 30. Thus legislators have known since the beginning of October what needed to be done. As for the need to take the order seriously, the fate of 11 legislators, who were denotified by the Election Commission, should be enough evidence of the need to comply. The denotification was the result of the Supreme Court judgement that ruled dual nationality incompatible with being a legislator. The ECP now does not need to go into the nationality of the legislators failing to comply. The legislators have failed to comply with an order of the Supreme Court, which is something for which a sitting Prime Minister was removed from office, and from the National Assembly, for doing.
The Supreme Court made its decision in its interpretation of the relevant constitutional provisions, but its decision is also rooted in the wisdom which was behind the original drafters: that someone with the citizenship of another country did not have the right to have a position with the potential of taking decisions on the country’s foreign policy, or of becoming privy to national secrets. At the same time, a person with dual nationality should not be barred from casting their votes in their original constituency. How exactly the state arranges for that vote to be cast is another matter, but in principle there seems no objection to allowing a dual national to cast his or her vote. Probably more importantly for Supreme Court, there is no constitutional prescription which can be interpreted as a bar.
The government might find itself affected by the decision, but it should be willing to help the ECP implement the decision, and in the coming general election, the parties should only issue tickets to those who do not have dual nationality.