During the 65-year long history of our country, the Parliament received its second big blow by judiciary on 19June.
It is not true that all the decisions made by apex court were always right. We had example of Z A Bhutto’s vital case in which the verdict was given by 3-4 judges. Nonetheless, the deciding judge, Justice Naseem Hassan Shah, after many years of his verdict in an interview with Geo TV categorically said that had he wanted to save the life of Z A Bhutto, he could have done so but his advocate Yahya Bakhtiar annoyed the judges.
This is not the first example of its kind. In 1954, when late Chaudhry Malik Ghulam Mohammad was Governor General (GG), the Speaker of National Assembly Maulvi Tameezuddin challenged the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly by GG in the apex court but the then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Justice Mohammad Munir, supported the decision of the GG and thus the judiciary delivered its first blow on the sovereignty of the parliament.
It appears that the history has repeated itself in 2012 as the parliament has recently received its second blow by judiciary. Throughout the world, the parliament is supreme whereas the job of judiciary is only to explain the constitution, not challenge every decision of the govt.
Unfortunately, a group of people in Pakistan have always tried to prove judiciary as supreme against the parliament and they have unfortunately succeeded in their designs. This will have highly bad repercussions on the sovereignty of the parliament besides on the future of the country as it is bound to further weaken it.
MOHAMMAD KHAN SIAL
Karachi