Democratic process within political parties: Supreme Court accepts petition for hearing

The Supreme Court on Wednesday accepted a petition for regular hearing. The petitioner seeks the directions of the apex court for framing appropriate rules to ensure implementation of democratic process within the political parties. "Democracy cannot be nurtured in any country where there is monopoly of few influential families on the political parties - meaning thereby that cartelistic democracy is more venomous than the doctorial regime," the petitioner contended.
A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was hearing the petition. It was filed by Feroze Shah Gillani. The bench issued notices to federation through federal law secretary and Election Commission of Pakistan in the matter and adjourned the hearing for two weeks.
The petitioner prayed the SC to direct ECP to make appropriate arrangements to closely supervise elections at all tiers of the registered political parties and no election symbols should be allocated to "undemocratic" political parties. The petitioner contended that due to a lack of democracy in the political parties fundamental rights of the masses were blatantly violated and they were not given the choice to choose their electoral candidates through this system. He further said that people were deprived of the fruits of democracy and political participation due to undemocratic nature of politics in the political parties.