Is the provision regarding educational qualifications of MP’s enough?

Muhammad Zubair writes for DOT : 
The Parliament of Bangladesh is the supreme authority to pass a legislation, which derives its authority from the Constitution. It may delegate its legislating power to any other body. Thus, the members of parliament are regarded as the ‘Law Maker’ of the Republic. It is desirable that the persons entrusted with the power of making laws should have highest echelon of education and quality as well to represent the people properly. Surprisingly, though our Constitution in Article 66 and the Representation of the People Order, 1972 in Article 12 have made a long-tail of disqualifications of a person to contest in Parliamentary Election, these two instruments enumerated only two qualifications on the other hand, namely- the person needs to be a citizen of Bangladesh and has attained the age of twenty-five years. Notably, the educational requirements of the contestants are absent there. The only provision in this regard is made in clause (3b) of Article 12 of the Representation of the People Order, 1972 which was inserted by the Representation of the People (Amendment) Order, 2008. It mandates that, the nomination paper shall be delivered along with an affidavit signed by the candidate which shall include, along with other documents, an attested copy of the certificate of highest education of the candidate. This only requires from the candidate the certificate of his highest degree of education, without mentioning the minimum level of required education to contest in the Parliamentary Election.
This Lacuna in the educational requirement of the candidates leaves an ample opportunity to the political parties to choose their candidates for election on the basis of political hierarchy and previous political involvement. Sometimes the popularity and proximity of the relationship to the party’s highest leader of the candidates matters a lot. The solvency of the concerned candidate is also considered to some extent. For this, we see that the people of Bangladesh are often represented by members who are not well-educated. Most interestingly, they often cite in the certificate ‘self-educated’ as their educational qualification. Although there is no wrong with this to become a ‘self-educated’ person, but the problem arises as any person can claim himself/herself as self-educated since there is no ascertaining mechanism in this regard. The impression of this becomes apparent when a member cannot even read out the written script properly.
It is quite ridiculous that whereas one needs to have years of training and standard-education even to supervise a shop, to run a workshop, to argue before the court; the legislatures of the country need not any particular level of education to participate in the act of legislating and running the government machinery. It is worth mentioning here the observation made by the then President of India Dr. Rajendra Prasad in 1949 in the eve of adopting the Constitution of India that, “I would have liked to have some qualifications laid down for members of the Legislatures. It is anomalous that we should insist upon high qualifications for those who administer or help in administering the law, but none for those who make it except that they are elected.” As the Members of Parliament are the representatives of the people and burdened with the great responsibility of legislating, they should be of such caliber by whom our people as well as our government is well represented before the world and the government machinery can run meticulously.
The writer is a Research Assistant (Law), Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs (BILIA).