Judicial-correct

After 44 years, the judicial record has been tweaked to put it in the right context. But it is too little, too late. The Supreme Court’s unanimous judicial review on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s hang-to-death decision — whereby it declared that the former prime minister was sent to the gallows without a proper trial, and one which did not meet the requirements of due process enshrined as per law and the Constitution — is a much desired legal correction. The pronouncement wasn’t surprising, though, as even the adversaries of the politician par excellence believe that it was a judicial murder, and an outcome of vendetta and revenge politics by the then men at the helm of affairs. Likewise, it took decades for the late Bhutto’s party, the PPP, to get this piece of review in retrospection, despite being in power all these decades, and similarly the apex court to dilate upon it through a snail pace — something which is unfortunate, to say the least.

The nine-member larger bench of the top court has rightly made some great strides in, at least, bringing to the fore a few valid observations on Bhutto’s extra-judicial extermination. It ruled that the Constitution and the law do not provide a mechanism to set aside the judgment whereby Bhutto was sentenced; and likewise, it cannot rule whether the conviction was “justified or could amount to deliberate murder”. The apex court, nonetheless, observed that it could go on to specifically identify the major constitutional and legal lapses that had occurred with regard to fair trial and due process of law.

This judicial review literally exonerates the founding PPP chairperson from the vilified charges through which he was taken out physically, and sets a convention that state-centric highhandedness and political squabbling could go on to commit grave human rights excesses. Four decades down the line, unfortunately, the tendency is still in vogue as political opponents are on the receiving end, and made to pay for abject intolerance of dissent.

The 1979 aspect of a compromised judiciary is in need of being widely debated and skeletons in the cupboard need to be exposed. By admitting that the legal omissions must come to the fore, the honourable bench of the Supreme Court has done a great service. It has astutely set a precedent that hasty trials, devoid of a proper right to defend, especially for those who draw the ire of the state, must be carefully decided. This judicial caution is appreciated, and must serve as a safety valve to uphold the basic principle of state ensuring an unbiased and fair trial.

Bhutto’s judicial review comes as an opportunity for political parties to unite on a single point of making sure that rule of law is the way to go, and resolve that throwing their opponents to the wolf in the legal wrenches must come to an end. This judicial-correct is worth celebrating.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 7^th, 2024.

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