The New Nation - Internet Edition

bdnews24.com, Dhaka

Speaker Muhammad Jamiruddin Sircar says Khaleda Zia's exclusion from the voters' roll does not disqualify the former prime minister from running for parliamentary elections.

Sircar quotes the Constitution to argue that a candidate does not need to be a voter to contest in the general elections.

"According to Article 66 of the Constitution, any person of at least 25 years of age can run in the parliamentary polls if he or she is a citizen of Bangladesh," Sircar told bdnews24.com in an interview Tuesday.

But according to the new Representation of the People Ordinance (amendment) 2008, recently approved by the interim cabinet, a parliamentary candidate must be a voter.

The Speaker argued any part of any ordinance or act that contradicted the Constitution would be null and void.

"When there is a conflict between a constitutional article and sections of acts or ordinances, the Constitution prevails over them," explained Sircar, who is a lawyer.

"The government could not make any law contrary to the Constitution," he stressed.

Article 66 of the Constitution says: "A person shall, subject to the provisions of clause (2), be qualified to be elected as, and to be, a member of Parliament if he is a citizen of Bangladesh and has attained the age of twenty-five years."

"I don't know whether the (RPO) provision conflicts with the Constitution. Please ask the legal experts," election commissioner M Sakhawat Hussain told bdnews24.com Tuesday.

On Monday, deputy inspector general of prisons Major Shamsul Haider Siddiqui, quoting election officials, told journalists that Khaleda would not be able to contest in the next general elections if she did not register herself as a voter by Aug 11.

But Khaleda refused to get enroled as voter while behind bars, the prisons official said after a meeting with the detained former prime minister.

The Election Commission's move to make the mandatory provision amending the Representation of the People Order 1972 followed suggestions from several parties in electoral dialogues earlier this year, though the RPO amendment has been greeted with howls of protest from political parties.