After months of restraint the Supreme Court seems to have decided it is time to hold the PML-N leaders to account for repeatedly assailing the judiciary in reaction to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's disqualification in the Panama Papers corruption case. On Thursday, the court sentenced Senator Nehal Hashmi to one-month jail term together with a Rs 50,000 fine, also disqualifying him from holding any public office for five years. It may be recalled that during the proceedings of the case against Sharif, his men regularly held forth outside the court making provocative statements. Nehal Hashmi went too far when, eight months ago, he made naked threats against the judges, the court appointed JIT members, as well as their children. Hence it was no surprise that the court said "we have felt satisfied that the contempt committed by the respondent is quite grave, and is one which is substantially detrimental to the administration of justice besides tending to bring this court and the judges of this court into disrespect and hatred." The next person summoned by Chief Justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar is the Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry, who at a recent public meeting in Jaranwala had urged the people to throw "these judges out of the court."
Notably, judges normally make sparing use of contempt punishments applicable in situations such as interruption of proceedings, disobedience to an order, or failure to comply with instructions, which can be ignorable. But it is quite another matter to attack the judiciary as an institution, one of the three pillars of the State, thereby undermining the authority of courts. Hence the Constitution of Pakistan forbids bringing the judiciary into disrepute. Unfortunately, the PML-N leadership has been launching no-holds-barred attacks on the apex court in blatant disregard for the constitutional provision. Nawaz Sharif and his daughter, Maryam Nawaz, have constantly been making derogatory remarks about the judges for his ouster and referring the related cases to a NAB court for trial. At the Jaranwala rally, the former incited his supporters to "themselves take notice" of the judicial verdicts against him; and the latter, accusing the judges of responding to their questions with "criminal silence" - only the judges can ask questions, not the defendants - instigated the people to "rise and teach a lesson to the pawns [judges] of conspirators [the military]". Maryam's husband, Captain Safdar (retd), too, has been rabble-rousing.
According to legal experts, now that the court has taken cognizance of two contempt cases, it would be surprising if the other contemners, Nawaz Sharif and Maryam Nawaz, at whose behest Nehal Hashmi and Talal Chaudhry committed that offence, are to be treated differently from them. Some worry such a course could lead to an unsavoury confrontation between institutions - something, they suspect, the PML-N leadership wants to deflect attention from the ongoing proceedings in a NAB court. The anxiety seems to be rather excessive. In any event, the courts generally are not expected to be concerned about political consequences of their verdicts. A legal phrase often quoted in such circumstances is "let justice be done though the heavens may fall."
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