Targeting the judges

EDITORIAL: Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) vice chairman Khushdil Khan has taken notice of a troubling development vis-à-vis the superior judiciary. On June 17, 2021, Khan directed the provincial and federal Bar Councils (BCs) to initiate disciplinary proceedings against the office bearers of those Bar Associations (BAs) that recently passed resolutions against superior court judges. The issue has emerged against the backdrop of the alleged move by the federal law ministry to link grants-in-aid to the passing of resolutions by the BAs against some superior courts judges. Khushdil Khan pointed out that the federal and provincial governments are bound under Section 57 of the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973 to provide grants-in-aid to the BCs and BAs. Such grants-in-aid, he continued, are not the property of the law ministry. He expressed serious concern over the move against independent judges of the superior judiciary. He asserted that the lawyers’ community was united and no one would be able to create divisions amongst them. Khushdil Khan vowed that the lawyers would protect the judges and go to any extent for the independence of the judiciary and rule of law. He regretted that the law ministry was ‘stooping so low as to use the grants-in-aid as a tool to get the support of lawyers against the judges’. On June 16, 2021, however, the law ministry categorically denied that the federal government was pressurising tehsil, district and high court BAs to adopt resolutions against sitting judges of the Supreme Court (SC) and higher judiciary. This denial notwithstanding, a convention of lawyers and civil society in Islamabad on June 17, 2021 on ‘Assault on Judiciary and Media’ condemned the ‘systematic manipulation’ of the judiciary, appointment of judges, ‘victimisation and vilification’ of judges, and demanded those involved in these unacceptable activities be brought to book.

It should be kept in mind that the contentious resolutions referred to above have not targeted the superior judiciary per se, only those judges considered too ‘independent’. Topping that list is SC Justice Qazi Faez Isa, who has been put through the wringer along with his family by a presidential reference moved against him before the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC). Despite that, Justice Isa and his family have been cleared of all the grounds adumbrated against them in the SJC as well as before his fellow judges of the SC. Everything that has flowed from the powers that be as a result, facilitated and supported, it must be said with regret, by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf government, has been somehow to find a way to remove Justice Isa. But all their machinations have come to naught. The law ministry after this failed effort is alleged to have decided to use grants-in-aid as pressure levers to get resolutions passed by the BAs against independent judges like Justice Isa. However, this campaign too appears stillborn since the PBC has taken a disciplinary action against the office bearers of such open-to-manipulation BAs, whose move also elicited a protest strike on June 17, 2021 by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa BC. The perceived extent of threat to the superior courts judges who are considered ‘too’ independent is mind-boggling. Justice Shaukat Siddiqui of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) has been successfully removed by the SJC for exposing in a speech the pressures allegedly faced by him from the security establishment to get judgements to their liking. One can criticise former IHC judge Siddiqui for not addressing the issue through proper channels and methods, i.e., reporting the phenomenon to his chief justice, but little or no attention or action has followed his revelations against the alleged security establishment personnel involved in such shenanigans. It goes without saying that in a democratic system, the independence of the judiciary as an institution and judges individually is a sine qua non if the system is to credibly retain that description.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021