ECP clears papers of Zardari, Saeed and Mushahid

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has cleared the nomination papers of Asif Ali Zardari, Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui and Mushahid Hussain Syed for the upcoming sixth presidential elections as none of them challenged the opponents' candidatures.
The nomination papers of Faryal Talpur, covering candidate of Pakistan People's Party Co-Chairperson, and Roedad Khan for Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui have also been accepted by the returning officer Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) former justice Qazi Muhammad Farooq, who rejected the nomination papers of 28 other candidates. In all 68 nomination papers were filed with the ECP - 33 candidates for taking part in election for the office of the president.
This would be the sixth presidential election in the country with first election contested by President Ayub Khan and Mohtarama Fatima Jinnah under the Basic Democracy (BD) system held under 1962 Constitution with presidential candidate directly elected by the local representatives.
The remaining five elections from 1973 to 2007 were held under 1973 Constitution with the Parliament electing Chaudhary Fazal Elahi in 1973, followed by Ghulam Ishaq Khan in 1988, Farooq Leghari in 1993, Rafiq Tarrar in 1997 and General Pervez Musharraf (Retd) in 2002 by a referendum and in 2007 by an outgoing Parliament.
The sixth presidential election, to be conducted by CEC Qazi Farooq, will be held on September 6 among the candidates of three major political parties, PPP, PML-N and PML-Q.
CEC Qazi Muhammad Farooq announced acceptance of nomination papers in the presence of the two candidates, Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui and Mushahid Hussain Sayed and the representatives of Asif Ali Zardari. The Returning Officer rejected nomination papers of 28 candidates out of total 33, who had filed nominations for the election to the office of the president, as their papers were incomplete and did not fulfil the requirements.
The CEC observed that the ECP must charge some fee from non-serious candidates for filing of nominations papers to discourage them. His remarks came during the scrutiny of nomination papers of Rao Javed Ali Khan, whose nomination like many others were incomplete.
In an unusual move, Senator Waseem Sajjad, on behalf of Pakistan Muslim League (Q), and Senator Farooq Naek and Babar Awan, on behalf of PPP, did not raise any objection on nomination papers of the rival candidates. PML-N candidate Siddqui, who came later, also raised no objection on his rival candidates. The EC set August 30 the last date for withdrawal of candidature and the final list of candidates would be displayed the same day.