Pakistan's politicians in fake university degree scandal

[The arrogant]

The Supreme Court has asked the Elections Commission to examine the degree certificates of almost all the country's 1 ,100 elected officials. They could lose their seats if found guilty in a scandal that has rocked a country still coming to terms with democracy after long periods of military rule.The investigation has also reopened a question about whether President Asif Ali Zardari ever graduated, as he claims, from a London business school. Local journalists have pored over reams of documents and dedicated thousands of column inches to the issue, much to the anger of politicians. "A degree is a degree," said Nawab Aslam Raisani, the chief minister of Balochistan when asked about the issue by reporters. "Whether fake or genuine, it's a degree. It makes no difference." Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf introduced the law in 2002 , requiring all candidates to hold a bachelor's degree. He claimed it would raise the calibre of politicians but critics said it was undemocratic in a country where 50 per cent of the population is illiterate. They suggested the real motive was to sideline opponents. The law has since been struck down but that has not stopped the Supreme Court last week asking for a review of parliamentarians elected when it was still in force. A spokesman for the Higher Education Commission said officials had already members of parliament who had not filed their university degrees along with their nominationdegrees along with their nomination papers, while the diplomas of 138 members were illegible. At least one sent a friend to sit his exams. Javed Siddiq, Islamabad editor of the Urdu newspaper Nawa-i-Waqt, said the Supreme Court had an ulterior motive and was flexing its muscles. "The court is intent on finding which of them have fake degrees so it can then try to say they had no right to make recent changes to the constitution which diluted its powers," he said. A spokesman for President Zardari said he was unaffected by the checks as he had been elected after the law was annulled.

Ref: international news website