EDITORIAL: Were there no Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah there would not have been our Pakistan. As the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), in sheer violation of Section 144, reaches up to the gate of the Supreme Court one would like to recall what the Quaid had in mind and said in so many words about such a power show against the Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial and the demand for his resignation.
In a public address in Dhaka (then Decca) on March 21, 1948, he famously said, “It is in your hands to put the government in power or remove the government from power, but you must not do it by mob methods. You have the power, you must try and understand the machinery. Constitutionally, it is in your hands to upset one government and put another in power if you are dissatisfied to such an extent”.
The machinery he talked about has been defined in quite some detail in the Constitution, which says while the legislation is the unfettered right of parliament and other elected assemblies, to judge if these laws were in line with the edict of the Constitution and in case there is confusion about a piece of law the Supreme Court can interpret it the way it likes, irrespective of the legislators’ perceptions and perspectives. In the framework of Separation of Powers without which there is no such thing as democracy, judicial independence is the right of CJP Bandial-headed Supreme Court of Pakistan.
The apex court had ruled the arrest of Imran Khan to be illegal and ordered that he be immediately released, two days after his “abduction” triggered massive violent protests across the country. It had greeted Imran Khan, saying ‘good to see you’ – since he was only an accused, so to speak. This unusual gesture on the part of CJP didn’t sit well with the PDM, particularly its head Maulana Fazlur Rehman. The PDM is now in front of the Supreme Court premises and would like to stay there until CJP Bandial resigns. The ‘Red Zone’ in which the Supreme Court is situated has been declared a ‘no-go area’ for demonstrations and power-shows ever since Imran Khan staged a dharna in 2014. It appears it’s no longer sacrosanct – what a joke and violation on the part of authorities that are expected to check its violation.
Now on display, the PDM’s power-show is competing with PTI’s performance of last week. The PTI blamed the Rangers’ action of Imran Khan’s arrest on the Islamabad High Court premises on the army leadership. It is accused of unleashing its ‘Tiger Force’ to destroy anything and everything that was connected with the armed forces. It vandalized a number of military installations, including the Jinnah House in Lahore where one of the corps commanders of military resides, GHQ Rawalpindi, a Pakistan Air Force (PAF) base in Mianwali – something that had not happened ever before and therefore played up by the enemy as the people’s rebellion against the armed forces. The government’s reaction to this mayhem was quick and widely welcomed by people. Now the question is whether or not those who have violated the sanctity of capital’s ‘Red Zone’ and demanded resignation of the Chief Justice of Pakistan, too, deserve the same kind of treatment. How ironic it is that Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief organiser Maryam Nawaz is accusing the apex court of imposing ‘judicial martial law’ on the country while speaking to the PDM protest participants just in front of the building of Supreme Court of Pakistan. It is true that our Supreme Court, which is rightly conceived as custodian of the Constitution and the final arbiter of the law, has had an inconsistent history. But we also must not ignore the fact that ours is a democracy with a written constitution. We never have so vibrant Legislature, Executive and Judiciary as today. The present-day judiciary is a highly valuable source for country’s democracy. We need to protect and preserve whatever we have achieved since the birth of Charter of Democracy 17 years ago. Unfortunately, the current executive-judiciary standoff or tussle does not portend positively for the future of democracy in the country.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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