Three cheers for our enrobed and uniformed messiahs
The decisions we make, end up making us. We attain nirvana, if they turn out right. We rot alive, if and when we misjudge and miscalculate. It is true for an individual as well as for those whose job it is to adjudicate the earthly affairs of mortal men
Now that we know what their Lordships had in their mind, and how their remarks and hints did reflect apprehensions and doubts they had about doings and dealing of House of Sharif in their final verdict, time to unearth what caused them dwellers of Big Marble Palace to chuck out a prime minister on a ground so slight, so miniscule that even the most ardent opponents were in disbelief for first few hours after the judgment.
Thousands of pages of JIT report, hundreds of hours of arguments, counter arguments, presentation of countless documents by both respondents and petitioners, and a whole nation held in limbo over the fate of their prime minister. And when the decision, the final verdict, the ultimate judgment was out, we come to know that it was something by the name of ‘un-withdrawn receivables’ that sealed Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif’s fate for good.
That, however, is the latest episode of an old season titled ‘Judiciary and its role in Pakistan’. What judiciary did and what great ideals it undid are on the fingertips of all those who have a little knack or knowledge of constitutional history of Pakistan and thus needs no reiteration.
Who can deny that in not so distant past their Lordships played second fiddle to the khaki-clad, baton-wielding, jackboot-wearing usurpers who made their coups first and sought a validation from dwellers of Big Marble Palace later? No prize for guessing whether they got it or not. And as they say, one can run all he wants from his past, still past always catches up.
Since the glorious restoration of judiciary in March, 2009, their Lordships had been basking in the blinding dawn of hard won judicial freedom their predecessors strived for. Now, be it proverbial man in the street, or gentle folks sitting in front of their tellies, or urban lads fidgeting with their smartphones, or blokes chatting away idly while sipping coffee all of them think of dwellers of Big Marble Palace as deliverers of justice, who can set all that is wrong with the country in general and politics in particular.
And that, dearest sirs and ma’ams, will be the chink in their Lordships’ robes as masses are led, misled, divided, grouped, aroused, silenced, fed, enslaved, and freed by the propagandist, the liar, the illusionist and the orator. A judge decides a case by pronouncing a verdict, there are winners and there are losers, he neither takes part in celebrating the gains made by winner nor mourns with the losing party. A judge does his job as diligently, as honestly as possible and in strict accordance with dictates of law and justice and makes his judgments and verdicts do the talk.
Pity, the times we live and breathe in, their Lordships find themselves in middle of cautious khakis on one side and contending civvies on the other. The absence of a uniformed over-reacher coupled with no protégé of Ghulam Ishaq Khan in sight has bestowed upon them the enviable power to ‘gavel-out’ elected prime ministers, who had been ‘booted out’ by overly concerned, duty bound generals , 58-2b-ed by worried, dutiful Presidents and assassinated by unknown spectres in the past.
The decisions we make, end up making us. We attain nirvana, if they turn out right. We rot alive, if and when we misjudge and miscalculate. It is true for an individual as well as for those whose job it is to adjudicate the earthly affairs of mortal men. We are our choices, wrote Jean Paul Sartre, a French philosopher half a century back. The erudite, learned Lordships must be acutely aware and conscientious of the axiom that pleases as well as haunts. They choose to single out a premier and make an example of him. How it will be translated five or ten years down the line? Will it meet the same fate like other landmark judgments that led us to where we are or will it usher a new era? We’ll see soon.
As far as cursing the folks we vote in one election after the other goes, old habits die hard and at times they become immortal. Time and conscious does make cowards of us all, slowly, steadily and eventually we all become man as imagined by the inimitable Russian novelist Dostoevsky, who was of the view that man is a coward and can get accustomed to anything.
About time to wrap this column up. Dearest sirs and ma’ams, till now we’ve witnessed jackboots trampling all that was sublime and sacred, now get yourself ready to watch the Honorable robes wrinkling out with their gavel all that cause trouble, get out of line or dare to question the greater plan for greater good of greater beings.
