64 AFRICAN COURT LAW REPORT VOLUME 1 (2006-2016) 27. In the instant case, since Mr Mtikila, whose rights have allegedly been violated. is party to the case, the issue at stake is one of ascertaining if a non-governmental organization is also allowed to file an Application based on the same allegations. it would have been a different situation if Mr Mtikila had not initiated an action before the Court and that both non-governmental organizations had acted for Mr Mtikila and initiated action on his behalf. Ill. Merits 28. I am of the view that barring independent candidates from certain elections and the correlative obligation to belong to a political party are not in themselves violations of Articles 10 and 13(I) of the African Charter; they can only be violations of those provisions if they are considered as unreasonable or illegitimate limitations to the exercise of the rights enshrined in the said provisions (see, on a similar matter, the findings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in paragraphs 193 and 205 of its judgment of 6 August 2008 in the case Castaneda Gutman v Mexico). 29. Unlike Articles 22 and 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Articles 10 and 13(1) of the African Charter do not provide in a satisfactorily manner for the freedom of association and the right of the citizen to freely participate in the government of his or her country. 30. The main weakness of these two provisions of the Charter lies in the claw-back clause they contain. Both articles indeed provide that the freedom of association and the right of the citizen to freely participate in the public life of his or her country must be exercised “in conformity with the rules laid down by law”. That clause does not appear in Article 25 of the Second Covenant which, for its part, provides that the guaranteed rights should be exercised “without discrimination and unreasonable restrictions”. This provision consequently allows for “reasonable” restrictions, such as those based on the age of the person for instance. lt is our view that Articles 10 and 13(1) of the Charter should be interpreted in the same spirit. The limitations that the lawmaker could provide to the exercise of those guaranteed rights must be reasonable or legitimate, that is, they would need to comply with a number of objective criteria. Since Articles 10 and 13(1) are silent, one could usefully refer to the criteria set out in the second Paragraph of Article 27 of the Charter even though this provision is a priori intended to prevent the abuse that the individual might likely commit in the exercise of his or her rights and freedoms rather than to protect the individual from abusive limitations to his or her rights and freedoms by the State, as it is emphatically suggested in the formulation of this Article and its location in the Chapter relating to the duties of the individual. 31. At any rate, in the final analysis, and as stated by the African Commission and confirmed by the Court in Paragraph 112 of the Judgment, this provision may be viewed as a general clause which restricts the margin of maneuver of States Parties as far as limitations are concerned. The only limitations to the exercise of the freedom of