This wasn’t the first year the judiciary has sent a prime minister packing; that happened during the last government as well. And, this being Pakistan, in both these instances, there was somehow the lingering suspicion of the involvement of the deep state.
In both instances, the judiciary would be offended at this aspersion. To quote Chief Justice Saqib Nisar, a person who could influence the judges “hasn’t yet been born.”
At the public gathering that he said this, he then went on to swear that the judiciary had not been pressurised in its recent decision to oust the prime minister, leading many to quip about how the times have changed: that in earlier times, it were the defendants who swore their innocence to the judges instead of the other way around.
Let’s attempt this a tad obliquely, shall we? For one does not want to be in the dock for being contemptuous.
A prime minister has been knocked out on a mere technicality. So what, the other side would ask. Technicalities are there for a reason, aren’t they? The letter of the law and all that. But an adherence to such standards of technicalities would render nearly the entire political class ineligible in our country, with its lax standards of maintaining paper trails! Well, the other side would reply, the job of the judiciary is to apply the laws, no matter what.
Well, it is alleged that those higher standards weren’t in play in the disqualification reference against Imran Khan. And that the disqualification of Jehangir Tareen was part of a balancing act because the differential treatment would have been extremely stark otherwise.
The only way the justices can dispel such impressions is if they were to hold the deep state’s feet to the fire in the coming year; it has been more than five years since the Asghar Khan petition verdict.
And, perhaps dispense that same justice to brother judges as well.