Look, who is talking!

Public memory is said to be short, but it surely is not as short as Malik Mohammed Qayyum, a former judge of the Lahore High Court and currently President of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SBCA) seems to think. He observed at a Lahore Press Club meeting on Monday that the judiciary is not giving decisions against the present regime.
And he said that "if the judiciary and the press performed their due roles independently, neither a dictator could topple a democratic government nor could he prolong his tenure." Apparently, he has come to grasp these basic values of justice, fairplay and democracy only recently.
For it was he who, during Mian Nawaz Sharif's rule, took the cue from the government as a member of a Lahore High Court bench hearing a corruption case against the then leader of the Opposition, Benazir Bhutto, and accordingly delivered a guilty verdict against her. To his bad luck, the government on whose behalf he had acted to give a tainted decision was soon toppled, and he was held accountable for it.
Taped recordings of his conversations with certain officials surfaced to present an undeniable proof that he had indeed allowed himself to take guidance from the government of the day to give a decision against its main political rival.
Consequently, he was forced to resign as a member of the higher judiciary for delivering a politically motivated decision, earning him the unsavoury distinction of having resigned on dishonourable grounds.
In his talk at the Lahore Press Club Malik Qayyum though went on to lament that people did not respect the decisions of the judiciary since it has lost its image in the public eye.
Which is true. However, the issue has little to do with the explanation he offered for it as he exhorted the judiciary to take steps to restore its dignity by getting implemented its decisions in letter and spirit. He mentioned two examples that, according to his lights, undermined the judiciary's dignity. One, a Supreme Court ban on serving meals at marriage functions was not being implemented, and the other that despite the apex court's decision to allow Shahbaz Sharif to come home the government had not allowed him to return.
Of course, the court decisions need to be honoured and implemented. But when they are not implemented, it is the government that looks bad, not the court. Hence, based on his own experience his counsel should be this:
The judiciary must guard its independence so as to be able to deliver justice to all and sundry irrespective of their station in life or political affiliations. It loses its respect in the public eye when its members fraternise with those in power and give decisions that are aimed at pleasing the high and mighty rather than to uphold the principles of justice.
What will restore our judiciary its dignity, therefore, is not only the implementation of its decisions, but even more importantly, decisions that are seen to be just.