The Scandal of Fake and Madrassa Degrees

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has sent notices to the 65 members of the MMA, an alliance of religious parties, after a petition was lodged with the court challenging their academic credentials. They have refused to appear in court.


Take the Associated Press report of October 7, 2002 about Shahtaj Qizilbash. She has spent years in the rough and tumble of Pakistani politics, advocating women’s rights and promoting peace with India. Now she said she wanted to run for office again. But she couldn’t because of the law requiring candidates to have a university degree.

Others in similar position either quickly sat exams as ‘private candidates’ or got a madassa degree. Some famous politicos who played these tricks were defeated at the polls, among them a prominent female former cabinet member from Punjab. There is, however, a federal minister whose only real qualification is an O-level certificate if one is to believe what was reported in the press.

According to a Dawn report of 11 Dec 2002, Mr Abdul Sattar Laleka, Minister for Labour, Manpower and Overseas Pakistanis, had always claimed to possess a GCE certificate, which is equivalent to matriculation. However, when the graduation condition was introduced, Mr Laleka produced a bachelor’s degree in business administration which, he claimed, had been awarded to him by the "Canadian School of Management" in 1990. The school could not be located at the address provided on the mark-sheet.

Mr Bari, the MMA leader who brought this up said it was strange that the minister had kept his graduation degree a secret for such a long time and that he had been issued the mark-sheet on May 10, 2000.

He said according to the degree, Laleka did his graduation from 1987 to 90, when he was a federal minister. Bari claimed that there was nothing on record to show that Laleka had ever sought leave either from the National Assembly or the federal cabinet to sit in exams during that period.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has now sent notices to MMA politicos – members of an alliance of religious parties -- to attend court in a row over their eligibility to serve as members of the national assembly. The request has led to accusations from religious leaders that the petition is a political ploy to undermine their authority.

Supreme Court has sent notices to the sixty odd members of the MMA after a petition was lodged with the court challenging their academic credentials. According to rules applied to last year’s national election, every candidate must have a university degree to serve in the assembly. (This is taken almost verbatim from a BBC report of 15th June.)

Right wing religious leaders - many of whom do not have degrees - protested, saying their qualifications from the Islamic religious seminaries were equivalent.

Those with fake degrees ought to be immediately expelled from parliament – no question about that – even if that means the exit of the weighty Lalela . That leaves the government, and also the court, with the tricky issue of how to evaluate the suitability of parliamentarians with madrassa degrees.
If education does indeed improve reasoning ability, which is essential for the analysis of complex matters of the state and government, then mandating a minimum educational standard is sensible and in fact desirable. After all, in the past, basic literacy and a matriculation was a requirement. Or was it not? Why then stick to this low level of educational achievement?

One could convincingly argue that a mere graduate may not have all the analytical skills to understand complicated issues and arrive at decisions that require deep socio-economic, technological and scientific knowledge. An even higher degree may be required. Alas, currently, our graduate degrees fail to guarantee any real knowledge, particularly that of science and technology. The madrassa degree is no better, and could in fact be worse as there is hardly any attention paid to critical reasoning in our seminaries.
Let’s pause to emphasize that rules and laws that the government fails to respect and enforce are better wiped off the books. That also applies to the degree requirement for parliamentarians!

One would wish to see highly educated people of integrity (an essential prerequisite) join the political process. A fair political process would bring up honest and enlightened individuals who can also explain why water freezes and boils from an atomic point of view! Hand waving or merely stating that its God’s will would then be grounds for disqualification! (It is best not to take my test too literally, or else it will mar rational discussion. What is suggested is that people elected ought to be familiar with, and appreciative of, the basics of modern knowledge.)

Some readers may rush to point out that the essence of democracy is true representation and therefore the people’s representatives ought not to be so highly qualified in a country with literacy rate barely above 35%. To counter this, I would say that knowledgeable persons of integrity capable of understanding and tackling our problems exist in all corners of our country.
It is the absence of a true democratic process that has resulted in enlightened people not joining the political process. The military is largely to blame for this, but political parties who have projected their own lackeys are also guilty. Ordinary Pakistanis need to restore their faith in the goodness and knowledge of our people. It’s also time that those in power do so.

Bottom line: Fire the fake university degree holders and send the madrassa qualified parliamentarians home.