Fake university degree suggestions in Pakistan
The Daily Telegraph has reported that Pakistan’s Supreme Court has asked the Elections Commission to examine the degree certificates of almost all the country’s 1,100 elected officials:
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.
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 identified 35 members of parliament who had not filed their university degrees along with their nomination papers, while the diplomas of 138 members were illegible. At least one sent a friend to sit his exams.
The law is questionable but the consequences are clearly rather significant. Perhaps the most striking comment was this:
“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.”
Indeed. Wonder what the Innovation, Universities and Skills Select Committee would have made of that line when they discussed comparability of degree standards in 2009.
Having a fake degree is as bad as stealing already. And it is not worth having one’s reputation sullied only to be found out to be a holder of a phony degree.