Never too late to start
New Lahore High Court Chief Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah set an admirable precedent on Tuesday – his first day as CJ – by suspending 27 Judicial Officers – whose reputation apparently left a little something to be desired – pending formal enquiry. It is clear enough, already, that the Lahore High Court will have little appetite for corruption, etc, under his watch at least. So far so good, then. Hopefully other CJs will follow Shah’s example sooner rather than later. The courts’ reputation, and subsequently their functioning, has suffered to no end over the last few decades. And few on the outside can point fingers, of course, out of fear of being found ‘in contempt’.
Yet there’s a lot more that needs to be done. And now that someone has, at least as far as appearances go, decided to clean the stables – no matter how limited – some amount of thought should go to areas where uplift is desperately needed. For one thing, ours is still a country where court cases normally go on for years on end without any sort of conclusion. That it can sometimes take up to three decades to decide on important cases is simply unacceptable. If somebody is finally giving judicial reforms some thought, this problem should be number one on the list.
Then there is the problem of the law having become just too expensive for the common man. Only those who can afford the best lawyers – which usually costs a little more than an arm and a leg – are able to ‘buy’ proper justice – literally. These drawbacks of the judiciary push people on the periphery towards so-called shari’a courts; for lack of viable options. They cost little, and they pronounce judgments very soon. That is why a lot of Swat locals were only too happy to approach Taliban run shari’a courts in the district’s darkest days. An able, clean and efficient judiciary forms the bedrock of the turnaround of a country like Pakistan. Those in charge have already ignored this phenomenon for far too long. Hopefully the LHC CJ’s sincerity will help modify the entire system.
