As the 15-months long Panama case hearings concluded with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification, the legal experts are unanimous about the legal options available to Nawaz Sharif to challenge the verdict. Pakistan Today asked senior lawyers about their take on the matter.
Supreme Court advocate Chaudhary Faisal Hussain was of the opinion that Nawaz Sharif has only one option left, that was to go for the review before the same bench. ‘See the ex-prime minister has now only one way ahead, that is to apply for a review,’ he said.
Former deputy attorney general and Supreme Court advocate Shah Khawar said that Nawaz Sharif has been disqualified for life. When asked what legal options he is left with, Khawar said that under the law of the land and Constitution of Pakistan, prime minister can go in review over a point of law before the same bench.
‘As Ahsan Iqbal pointed out in his press conference that the government plans to go in review, I think they’ll go but it’ll be of little avail. As the PML-N is pretty much at the brink over this decision,’ says advocate Badar Iqbal. ‘I wonder that five, ten years down the road what will we make of this judgment. That decision is left to the future generations,’ he said while commenting on the judgment.
It is pertinent to mention here that Article 188 deals with the review of judgments or orders by the Supreme Court and it says, “The Supreme Court shall have power, subject to the provisions of any Act of 414 (Parliament) and of any rules made by the Supreme Court, to review any judgment pronounced or any order made by it”.
Furthermore, the judicial review is applicable where there is no appeal and through it Supreme Court interprets a point of law and determines its constitutional status and settles a question of law.
‘The power of judicial review is exercised differently in different political systems. In countries like the United Kingdom where the constitution is largely unwritten and unitary in character and parliament is sovereign, the courts can declare an act of parliament to be incompatible with the constitution, but they cannot invalidate a law for being inconsistent with the constitution. In other words, the judiciary can only interpret the constitution,’ writes notable jurist Hussain Haider Zaidi.
