ISLAMABAD, April 29,2013 (AAMIR SAEED / UPI Next) — With a May 11 election set to mark the first transition from one elected government to another in Pakistan since independence in 1947, two bodies are responsible for preventing corrupt candidates from entering the National Assembly and the country’s four provincial assemblies.
The National Accountability Bureau is responsible for examining candidates for criminal activity, tax evasion, loan defaults, corruption or criminal convictions. If the NAB discovers corruption it passes the information to the Election Commission, which oversees the election, for potential further action against the candidates.
The commission is “the only institution empowered to handle the whole election process,” NAB Chairman Fasih Bokhari told UPI Next. He said the commission “referred the credentials of over 24,000 candidates to a special cell established in the bureau for scrutiny of aspiring candidates.”
