Well-thought-out script against judicial overreach

Shah Mehmud Qureshi kept on to wail over the judicial overreach with guarded but pinching words and a cynical mien.

It did not happen just like that. The outburst of pent-up resentment regarding the overreach of our hyperactive judiciary from all sides of the house Thursday morning clearly suggested a well-thought-out script that the leading legislators of various political parties might have agreed to execute after an exhaustive round of discreet meetings.

As the opposition leader in the national assembly, the unusually agitated Syed Khurshid Shah took the floor to inform the house that the Sindh government was yet not ready to hold local bodies’ polls on the date ‘arbitrarily’ set by the Supreme Court. The State Printing Press has no capacity to print ballot papers for a huge number of constituencies “in such a short time.” The Election Commission can certainly ask the private sector to do the needful, “but people would question the whole electoral process, if ballot papers were not printed by the government-controlled press.”

Shah Mehmud Qureshi of the PTI fully endorsed Khurshid Shah’s concerns, but also added that the fixing of a date for local bodies’ polls in Punjab by the Supreme Court would facilitate massive gerrymandering by the provincial government. “We accepted the results of brutally rigged elections of May 2013 with a heavy heart. That won’t happen with local bodies’ polls, if they were held in haste and without going through a credible process of marking constituencies.”

Khawaja Sa’ad Rafiq used to relish the reputation of being a fire-spitting hawk of the PML-N. He did not appear upset with insinuating remarks of Shah Mehmud Qureshi against his leaders. Disregarding those remarks, he rather kept on to wail over the judicial overreach with guarded but pinching words and a cynical mien. In the end, the national assembly hurriedly passed a unanimous resolution. In the name of seeking more time for holding local bodies’ elections, this resolution also tried subtly communicating to the Supreme Court that our politicians would not like anymore “intrusions” into their territory.

Dispassionately speaking the legislators from all the main contenders of our political pie sounded justified in expressing their reservations vis-à-vis the superior judiciary, but they also looked as if reacting too late. If they truly believed in a people-empowering system, local governments should have already been there, functioning with full force and vigour. After elected to the national and the provincial assemblies, “our representatives” do not want to devolve power to the grassroots, however. You can’t blame the Supreme Court if it found an excellent opening to show it to the public as if the local bodies’ polls were “enforced upon” these power monopolizing politicians. The legitimate concerns, which various members of the national assembly expressed Thursday, would sound as lame excuses in the given context. That will rather help the Supreme Court to get away with populist intrusions into their turf.

While wailing over the judicial overreach, the PML-N and the PTI must also admit that with the sole objective of paralysing the previous government, their leaders had been frequently approaching the superior courts. The story started with multiple scandals related to Rental Power Projects and eventually reached a deadly standoff that helped the Supreme Court dismiss an elected prime minister over and above the relative institutions like the national assembly and the election commission. Nawaz Sharif had himself gone to the court to ‘expose the anti-state initiatives’ of the previous government during the noisy days of the so-called “memogate.” Every other day, Imran Khan would also keep requesting the Supreme Court that “the corrupt practices” of the former president and the prime ministers should be checked through suo motu actions. After habitually facilitating the Supreme Court to intrude into areas reserved for the political class, both the PML-N and the PTI now sound as if protesting too much.

If they are serious in reclaiming the lost territory, why not to begin with quick setting of the Public Accounts Committee and force the Supreme Court to table its accounts for a thorough review by it. None other than Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had asked for the audit of the Supreme Court accounts as Chairman of the PAC and the leader of the opposition in the previous assembly. The Supreme Court refused to oblige and the PML-N legislators later started having cold feet to strengthen a duly established body to scrutinize spending of the public money by the courts. “Our representatives” also abandoned their authority whenever it came to appoint judges for the superior courts and simply failed to evolve any mechanism to oversee the performance of these judges. After wilful surrender of the legislative authority, our representatives must not cry like helpless victims now.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 8^th, 2013.