Recently, I was reading news about acquittal of Maryam
Nawaz, and I realized that the accountability court had convicted her in 2018
and now she has been acquitted in exactly the same case in 2022 by Islamabad High Court. So, what was different
this time? What details previous court had missed which were available with the
court this time? To my surprise there was no new entry of evidence in the
case, the case was dismissed this time on the ground of lack of evidence which
did not happen last time.
That’s not the first time this has happened. Ayasha Jalal a
famous historian of Pakistan writes in her book Struggle for Pakistan that:
‘’the emerging structural
imbalance within the state in the first decade was given constitutional
legitimacy by a judiciary forced into subservience by an all-powerful
executive.’’
That was the case of Molvi Tamiz ud din who lost the case
for Pakistan under the law of necessity. That was not the only case then came a
series of cases for example the case of executing Bhutto for aiding the murder
of Ahmed Kasuri has always been written as controversial in the history
by almost every historian. Then comes the case of Musharraf who suspended
constitution violating article 6 of it and took oath
from judiciary under PCO in 2007 and the judiciary kept working under it
without any issue. The same judiciary in 2019 declared that Musharraf committed
an act of high treason and should be punished.
The question here is that what is the reason that the
decisions come out to be at 180 degrees when reviewed after some years from the
initial decision?
The easiest observation is that a decision given under the
government of a dictator will be against the civil governments and a decision
given under a civil government will be against the dictator. A decision given
in the government of PTI will be against the PML(n) and a decision taken in the
government of PML(n) will be in the favor of PML(n) and against the PTI.
So, it will not be wrong to say that political leadership decides what would be the decision. That is called political victimization. Unfortunately,
in Pakistan the most extensively used tool and institution for political
victimization is judiciary.
Nobody is allowed to criticize it, even I have to deliberate upon the selection
of my words a lot while writing this article as it may not offend the
sacredness of our judicial system.
Jadunath Sarkar talking about administrative system of
Mughals writes that they did not have any institution of critique or opposition
where a constructive objection or a healthy debate in negation to the actions
of the emperor could be done as a result the Mughals had to use might all the
time to stay dominant in India. They turned everything into security.
Then came English with their extraordinary administrative
system to control slave colonies. They might be very authoritative and
supporters of centralization in their colonies but how they behaved within the
boundaries of UK can be seen from this statement of Weinstein Churchill
‘’Criticism may not be agreeable
but is necessary. It does exactly what pain does in a body; it draws our
attention to an unhealthy state of affairs’’
Nobody is allowed to
ask why Asma Nawab had to spend 20 years in jail before it could be proved that
she was innocent?
Can someone bring back her 20 years of youth? Why Mazhar
Hussain was acquitted 2 years after his death in Murder case 2004?
Recently Justice Qazi Faiz Esa asked a question from the
audience about their satisfaction towards the
performance of judiciary and nobody raised hand to show his satisfaction in the system, Justice Qazi faiz Esa simply said ‘’We got an F’’
and laughed about it and that’s it. That’s what his reaction was to such a sorry
state of affairs regarding judiciary.
That’s the reason that Amnesty international ranks police
and judiciary the most corrupt institutions in Pakistan and in civil judicial
system Pakistan ranks 106th among 113 countries.
What could be the possible solution to this?
How can we demand a better judicial system without hurting the sentiments of
the institution?
No Power without
Prosperity
No Prosperity without Security
No Security without Justice;
and
No Justice without Enforcement
In these four lines lies the golden rules of governance as
well
Secondly, the Honorable judges of the Judicial system of
Pakistan must realize that with great power comes great responsibility and
it behooves the greatest to be active always otherwise
there will be more and more cases pending in Pakistan’s Supreme Court in
addition to hundreds of thousands awaiting trial across the judiciary,
according to a Human Rights Commission Pakistan report released every year.
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