Man, who redefined judiciary, exits

Pakistan’s longest serving Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry will retire today (Wednesday), ending an era marked by aggressive judicial activism that even snared a serving prime minister.
Chaudhry, credited with making the judiciary a strong pillar, is a man feared by the political class and the bureaucracy. He built a reputation for himself through direct confrontation with the civilian government and the powerful military to an extent.
Chaudhry, 64, himself believes that his legacy will continue even after he departs from the Supreme Court.
“When such judges are still in the apex court, no one can derail the system from the path of rule of law. I lived my life, I fought my wars but not against the poor and weak but against power, cruelty and injustice,” he said recently. He said historians will judge how the Supreme Court worked under him.
“You can see not just one but 20,000 cases which we resolved.”
Born in Quetta on December 12, 1948, Chaudhry is the longest serving Chief Justice in Pakistan’s history.
He was appointed the top judge on June 30, 2005 but remained dysfunctional from November 3, 2007 to March 16, 2009 after he was deposed by former military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf.
He became a symbol of the lawyers’ movement against Musharraf and their protests eventually played a crucial role in the fall of his dictatorial regime. After his reinstatement in 2009, Chaudhry took up scores of suo motu cases against corruption and rights violations and issued strong judgements.
Though seen with suspicious eyes by the political class and the bureaucracy, Chaudhry is a darling of the masses. Chaudhry forced former premier Yousaf Raza Gilani to step down in 2012 after he refused to implement the Supreme Court’s orders to revive graft cases in Switzerland against then President Asif Ali Zardari.
Many critics had then described Gilani’s ouster as a “judicial coup”.
Though most of the senior lawyers turned against the chief justice after his restoration, his real strength lay in young lawyers who still see Justice Chaudhry as a role model for freedom loving members of the legal fraternity.
However, his critics accuse him of taking oath under Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) from the same military autocrat and then justifying military intervention and even giving the dictator a blanket authority to amend the constitution according to his whims.

MAKING OF A HERO

On March 9, 2007, Justice Chaudhry went to Army House to submit the yearly report of the Supreme Court to Gen Musharraf. However, the military ruler confronted the chief justice with evidence of alleged misconduct and asked him to step down. But Justice Chaudhry refused to do so and turned down Musharraf’s offer of accommodating him on some other post.
This kind of defiance was never known to a dictator in history, so he ordered coercive measures to be adopted against the CJP including his suspension until reference against him was decided by Supreme Judicial Council.
Not only Justice Chaudhry refused to fall in line of Musharraf’s order but he single-handedly launched a movement against the dictator when even political parties could not dare do so. This movement later got extraordinary support from the print and electronic media of the country which had never before enjoyed the taste of freedom.
This bond between Chaudhry and media later turned tables on the dictatorial regime as they were able to mobilise the lawyers, civil society and political parties all over the country and the country saw its solitary mini-revolution later in year 2007.

ROLE MODEL:

Former joint secretary of District Courts Islamabad, Arbab Alam Abbasi told Pakistan Today that Justice Chaudhry has become an icon for freedom lovers and those who wanted the rule of law in the country will never forget his services for Pakistan.
“Justice Iftikhar is not an individual now… he has become a role model for freedom lovers across the globe. The people of Pakistan have always looked towards Western countries for role models but now the Western people see a role model in him. Even the judgments authored by Justice Chaudhry are now being referred to students in Harvard University,” he said, adding that this was a unique achievement for any judge of Pakistan.
The young lawyer said that the CJP had taken action against judges involved in immoral or corrupt practices and now no judge could dare get involved in corruption. He said that whenever an application was filed against any judge mentioning his involvement in activities below dignity of a judge, prompt action had been taken after investigation.
He said that another achievement of Justice Chaudhry is that he had removed the hold of habitual litigants by introducing National Judicial Policy (NJP).
“Due to the NJP, pendency of cases was discouraged and the lower courts now decide a matter within months. Moreover, the number of cases in lower courts has been reduced from thousands to hundreds in mere three years which is a major achievement by all means. Now, no lawyer can delay any case indefinitely as the policy of granting stays has been removed,” he added.
Mian Faisal Irfan, another young lawyer, said that the young lawyers still stand by Justice Chaudhry despite the fact that all senior leaders of the lawyers’ movement, except for Hamid Khan and Munir A Malik, had turned against him.
“The Human Rights Cell of the apex court has done wonders for the poor and meek who could not afford hefty fees of the senior lawyers. The Chief Justice came to rescue the common people by taking suo motu notices and redressed the grievances of the public at large.
Asked why senior lawyers were opposed to the suo motu initiative, Mian Faisal said that the senior lawyers were opposed to this idea as this had discouraged their business of taking hefty amount as their fees.
He claimed that once the lawyers’ movement succeeded and judges were restored, the senior lawyers wanted to be appointed as judges but the chief justice refused to do so as he believed in merit-based policy.
Irfan said that the working hours of the apex court judges had increased till late evenings under Justice Chaudhry – a new precedence set by the judges. “Otherwise in past, judges had a tendency to leave court before lunch. But under Justice Chaudhry, judges now sit till late evenings.”
Another achievement of Justice Chaudhry, Mian Faisal asserted, was that now no senior or junior could get fixed his cases in the apex court misusing anyone’s influence.
Lawyer Razaullah Khan Niazi said that prior to Justice Chaudhry, no judge had ever dared to summon the prime minister, defence minister or chief of the all powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in court.

LANDMARKS DECISIONS AND CASES INITIATED BY JUSTICE CHAUDHRY

Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, after his reinstatement in 2009, took scores of suo moto notices on charges of corruption and human rights violations and issued unprecedented number of judgments in such cases.
The role of the top court witnessed a visible change after the independence of judiciary. The CJ did his best to keep a strict check on corruption in government institutions. Billions of rupees returned to the national kitty as a result of just one suo motu action on the controversial Rental Power Project.
The CJ also took suo moto notices of financial irregularities in NICL and EOBI besides mismanagement and corruption in connection with arrangements for Hajj.
Thanks to one of such bold initiatives as a result of which the Capital Development Authority (CDA) recovered thousands of canals of land worth billions of rupees from the illegal occupation of mafias.
The CJ’s notice also brought the powerful murderers of Shahzeb before the court and who can forget the suo motu taken on Sarfraz Shah’s killing by a Rangers’ personnel in broad day light in Karachi.
When the government failed to maintain order in Balochistan and Karachi, it was once again Chief Justice Chaudhry who took initiatives on the issues of missing persons in Balochistan and target killings in Karachi, and announced crucial judgments.
Waheeda Shah, a leader of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), also had to face disqualification as a result of one such suo motu action after she slapped a presiding officer during elections.
Suo motu cases ranging from the recovery of liquor from TV actress Atiqa Odho at an airport to graft allegations against his own son Arsalan Iftikhar came before the CJ. Apart from these, many other influential and important personalities had to taste the flavor of independent judiciary, for the first time in Pakistan’s history.

DETRACTORS VIEW:

Critics, especially senior lawyers, have accused Justice Chaudhry of failing to rise beyond his personal benefits and accused him of protecting his family’s wrongdoing, especially the alleged fraud by his son Arsalan Iftikhar.
They also say that the CJP took suo motu notices under Article-184/3 of the Constitution on numerous issues but later found himself facing criticism for encroaching into domain of the Executive. Hence, in almost all such cases, the matter was left halfway without providing relief to the masses already suffering at the hands of price hike and inflation.
In this regard, the suo motu notices taken in rise of prices of sugar, power tariff etc could be mentioned which were later disposed of without any conclusion.