Restrain executive if it disobeys the law: CJP

CJP says constitution provides judiciary power of judicial review of executive and legislative acts.

ISLAMABAD:

If the executive does not obey the law, the legislature must take action against arbitrary non-compliance, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry said in his address to a delegation of civil servants and trainee officers.

The chief justice told the trainee officers from the National School of Public Policy on a visit to the Supreme Court that the constitution is supreme and all organs have to remain within their spheres. The exclusive domain of the legislature is to pass laws. “The judiciary is entrusted with the responsibility to decide cases in accordance with the law and to ensure that all branches of the state are functioning within their jurisdictions. It is also vested with the power to intervene whenever any state organ exceeds its prescribed limits,” he added.

He said an independent bureaucracy meant a civil service which was not beholden to the executive. “In its zeal to command the civil service, the executive acquired control over the power of transfers and extensions, which encouraged bureaucrats to show more loyalty to political parties than the state,” he added. The chief justice advised trainee officers to follow their superiors’ orders but not if they were against the law.

Two factors which are considered to be crucial for law enforcement are political fragmentation and public support for maintaining the rule of law, he said. The Supreme Court, having been bestowed with the important role of overseeing the executive, had come to the rescue of civil servants to save them from political victimisation. The chief justice was of the view that the standard of civil service deteriorated during the tenure of Ghulam Muhammad and Iskandar Mirza primarily on account of their involvement in politics.

He said the constitution provided a system of checks and balances, in which the judiciary has been granted the power of judicial review of executive and legislative acts. “While deciding cases involving the infringement of fundamental rights, the courts should be dynamic rather than static. It is not new or novel for the courts to exercise the powers of judicial review.”





Published in The Express Tribune, April 10^th, 2011.