As if the mechanism to restore the deposed judges was not a subject hot enough for national debate, we have this ex-Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry's call on Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday. Within minutes of breaking this news, a controversy was in the brew as to the propriety of his move, with opinions for and against expressed in abundance from all and sundry.
Justice Chaudhry's supporters, including Aitezaz Ahsan and Tariq Mehmud, stoutly defended the call as a social gesture, in that the deposed Chief Justice and some of his colleagues went to the Zardari House only to offer condolence over the death of Benazir Bhutto, and the judicial issue did not come up at their meeting.
Isn't it a fact that she had called the deposed Chief Justice as 'my Chief Justice' and even tried, unsuccessfully, to meet him at his residence, say the lawyers who accompanied him. But quite a few others, including Qazi Hussain Ahmad and Akram Sheikh, who too strongly support the demand for restoration of sacked judges, think that the move that had brought about this meeting was ill-advised and it should not have taken place, at least at this point of time.
The controversy has both a substantive dimension and a subjective one, that is the facts of the case and how the meeting is now being perceived. The hard fact is that the coalition leadership's commitment to restoration of the deposed judges within 30 days of coming to power is a high point of the Murree Declaration. The coalition parties have elected its Prime Minister and are presently in the process of firming up cabinet formation.
Of course there are differing points of view, inter-party and intra-party, on the mechanism to bring about the restoration of judiciary; as some believe restoration can be effected by a simple executive order following a parliamentary resolution, others think a constitutional amendment would be needed to restore the sacked judges. But there is no going back by the coalition, at least there is no visible sign of that, on the pledge to restore the sacked judges.
Tellingly, one of the first orders issued by the new Prime Minister was the immediate release of the detained judges. That serving as the background, to assume that Justice Chaudhry and his colleagues met Asif Ali Zardari to muster support for their restoration is not a very cogent argument. After all, the former Chief Justice had also met the same day a visiting delegation of American Congressmen, who learnt first hand the rigours of the five-month long house detention of Pakistan's top judge.
Were Justice Chaudhry a street-smart person he would not have run afoul of President Pervez Musharraf. After all, it is here in Pakistan that successive superior courts have upheld military take-overs relying on the infamous 'doctrine of necessity'.
But having said this, one cannot deny the fact that our socio-cultural milieu as it obtains is grievously infested with doubt and suspicion about anything and everything, particularly in the field of national politics. A very few trust the spoken word. Given the political polarisation, each segment of society has developed its own brand of perceptions about the actions and developments that it confronts on daily basis.
These perceptions are often stronger than reality; hence the widely practised caution to be extra careful even when doing something that is absolutely the right thing to do. Ex-Chief Justice Chaudhry's visit to the Zardari House falls in that category of actions that are taken in defiance of the caution to be careful of public perception. That even Nawaz Sharif has decided not to call on Justice Chaudhry now that he is free is the best example of that extra caution. But will history vindicate such an attitude; we leave it for our posterity to know. Meanwhile, we may put up with what the Chinese call 'interesting times'.