Delaying justice by gimmickry
To the layman the disqualified former Prime Minister and his family were provided ample opportunity and sufficient leeway, even a misplaced leniency according to some critics, to prove their innocence before the five-member Supreme Court Bench and the Joint Investigation team. The crucial case to decide the fate of a powerful political dynasty is now in its last time-bound stage in NAB’s Accountability Court. Unfortunately, the strategy followed by the defence from the outset is apparently one of bogging down the judicial process in hair-splitting legal technicalities and procedural glitches, and aggressive speeches against the judiciary by a group of zealous PML-N loyalists, including cabinet ministers. The main thrust of the latter gentlemen is to shout from the rooftops about the Sharif family’s innocent–as-a-sunset past, and raise a dinning chorus of protest against the imagined bias of their adjudicators. Needless vilification and procrastination by various means was and is the name of the high-stakes game, and the unending ‘why was I removed’? lament of Nawaz Sharif, which has also kept emotions and tempers running at a high pitch.
Yesterday’s incident involving a brawl between PML-N lawyers and police posted at Islamabad’s Federal Judicial Complex where Nawaz Sharif, Maryam Safdar and Capt. (r) Safdar were to be formally indicted, appears another instance of the old pre-planned impeding game. Reportedly, the pumped-up PML-N lawyers were stopped from entering the courtroom, and in the ensuing scuffle a black coat suffered minor wounds, causing matters to spill into the courtroom itself, forcing the judge to adjourn proceedings to October 19, perhaps the secretly desired end result of the whole enterprise. The damning indictments postponed, an excellent opportunity gained for more grumbling over Punjab (actually PML-N) police manhandling, and more tears shed over being the wronged and aggrieved party. Another dilatory tactic is the constitutional petition filed on Friday in the Supreme Court to declare the references illegal or club them into one, and meanwhile halt the NAB proceedings. The Rangers had best be recalled to ensure smooth and timely hearings and to avert another PML-N court- storming of the November 28, 1997 kind.
