Government lethargic regarding judicial reforms under National Action Plan
When the 21st Amendment was passed in January 2015, providing a constitutional umbrella to military courts, parliamentarians were generally averse to the idea. But the December 2016 terrorist attack on Peshawar Army Public School forced their hand, albeit with the provision of the two year sunset clause. Central to this arrangement was the government pledge to reform the criminal justice system and strict implementation of the 20-point National Action Plan.
At a Parliamentary Panel meeting on Tuesday on the future of the military courts, whose tenure ended on January 7, the opposition protested that the PML-N had done nothing meaningful on national security. The government was being non-serious and the glaring absence of the Interior Minister from the meeting was the proof. It must be said that the deliberations should have started much before the known cut-off date, with the Prime Minister and the Interior Minister attending. The military courts will now remain in a state of limbo indefinitely.
Gen. (ret) Raheel Sharif has spoken emphatically in favour of military courts, calling them need of the hour and helpful in Pakistan’s war on terror. The conviction rate of military courts speaks for itself: 96.4 percent, as compared to the civilian Anti Terrorist Courts’ rate of 37 percent in KP, 21 percent in Punjab, 9 percent in Sindh and 7 percent in Balochistan. But questions of due process, fair trial or ‘condemned unheard’, always persist in case of military courts. Many of their decisions have also been stayed by the High Courts.
The government needs to confront terrorism with clarity and vigour in broad consensus with the opposition. Bold implementation of all the 20 points of the NAP, creating specialised rapid response forces to tackle the sophisticated tactics of terrorists, carefully monitoring seminaries, ensuring regular meetings of the Joint Investigation Directorate, plugging the legal loopholes, competent prosecution, witness protection programme, security of presiding judges, scientific collection of evidence and forensic laboratories to analyse it, are all essential tools against terrorism. But time is fleeting.
