Out of the frying pan, into the fire
The writer is an advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan
What the country witnessed in the National Assembly on the 1st of Ramazan was truly unprecedented. Unfortunately Imran Khan was ill advised by his legal team. Up till now he had a law minister whose advice took precedence over others. It is evident that his overnight departure and joining the opposition ranks left Imran with a big problem.
Imran Khan initially used to have the luxury of being advised by Hamid Khan, a senior advocate of the Supreme Court, who was one of the founding members of the PTI but again Imran’s short sightedness and ego forced Hamid Khan to exit. After that as the saying goes “in absence of light, darkness prevails”.
The Supreme Court on April 7 gave a historic judgment which, according to a majority of lawyers, is in accordance with the law and Constitution. Not only did the Supreme Court unanimously set aside the Deputy Speaker’s unconstitutional ruling and ordered reversing the subsequent actions by the then Prime Minister as well as the President, it also rejected the government’s arguments for applying the much maligned doctrine of necessity in the larger public interest.
For three and a half years, Imran Khan fought with politicians and tried to expose their corruption, a step that might have been praiseworthy had he not forgotten to do the most needful — fix the economy.
Imran Khan’s political party ‘Tehreek e Insaf’ unfortunately failed to fix the very basic thing that they had promised the masses. The delivery of insaf i.e. justice — his principal election slogan. Instead Khan attacked the judiciary by filing a reference against Justice Qazi Faez Isa. If Khan was so determined to wash away corruption from the judiciary then why were only one or two judges targeted? Imran could have targeted corruption by fixing the entire judicial system. But he failed to fix the thing that provides justice to everyone. He failed to amend the old and obsolete procedures which are till date being used by the courts. Khan failed to ensure that every citizen has easy access to the justice system in Pakistan. Besides judiciary, corruption in the police system and civil bureaucracy have also drastically increased.
The unfortunate reality is that even those who came before him failed to fix the legal system. For instance, the Civil Procedure Code — drafted by the British in 1908 and still followed today — is completely outdated in my opinion. With the passage of time the British themselves updated their code and kept abreast with the requirements of the developing judicial system whereas we decided not to; and even after 100 years we follow a code which was drafted to cater to the needs of a judicial system that died when the British left. We don’t need amendments in this code. We need a new code which will serve the 21st century lawyer and litigant. Unfortunately, no government has looked into this. Same applies to the Criminal Procedure Code of 1898.
My fear now is that no matter who forms the new government, the result will unfortunately be the same — zero. The previous governments have too attacked the judiciary in order to protect their sovereign rule. So I ask you: what has changed?
Published in The Express Tribune, April 14th, 2022.
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