EDITORIAL: While the noise surrounding the historic SJC (Supreme Judicial Council) ruling – that retired apex court judge Sayyed Mazahar Ali Naqvi was “guilty of misconduct” and “should have been removed from the office of judge” – can and no doubt shall be duly investigated and explained, it sets a very important precedent that judges will no longer be allowed to evade accountability and walk away with their many perks and privileges by resigning whenever a reference is taken up against them. Our judicial history is littered with instances of judges themselves never facing the law because they’ve either always been exonerated or they retired before the investigations were complete or, worse come to worst, simply resigned and avoided the axe.
But no longer. And now it will be important for the SJC to address all such references against all judges very promptly, so the old tradition of this land that judges can never be judged for their own alleged “misconduct” can be put to an end forever. This was, in fact, a stain on the judiciary that allowed the less scrupulous within the fold to bend and break the law at will as they delivered justice to the rest of society. And the progress made now proves that the current chief justice is very serious about self-accountability, which is very welcome.
It’s no secret that the judiciary has, over the last few decades, acquired an enduring reputation as one of the most corrupt and compromised institutions in the country. One reason, quite clearly, was that a certain breed of judges was able to easily warm up to politicians, take sides in sensitive cases, join like-minded groups on the bench and manage to keep their lucrative pension packages, along with a lot of privileges denied to other segments of this society, even if a reference was filed here or there.
It’s also important to note that allegations that the reference against Naqvi were politically motivated are still a secondary concern in this case for at least two reasons. One, this was not the first time he was accused of “misconduct” by the bar. And two, some allegations had to do with property dealings that he could not explain, real estate brokers wiring money to his children, and his contacts with politicians whose cases he was adjudicating. And to say that investigations into such shady practices might be politically motivated would amount to stretching common legal sense more than a little bit.
The biggest takeaway from all this is that judges, too, are going to be judged from now on. That is the number-one requirement in any properly functioning democracy, especially an Islamic society. It doesn’t take much to understand that judges, who interpret and implement the law of the land, need to be the epitome of fair dealing themselves. And there must always be a mechanism in place that is designed to identify and remove the black sheep from among them.
It’s already taken long enough for SJC to set this precedent.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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