Haqqani instructs counsel to withdraw from future SC Memogate hearings

Former Ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani on Wednesday gave clear instructions to his counsel to withdraw from all future Supreme Court (SC) hearings in connection with the Memogate case, saying, “The judiciary holds no relevance in the eyes of the world as it was at its lowest ebb.”

Haqqani said he did not trust the Pakistani establishment to provide justice on the basis of fair play, adding that the Supreme Court was an important part of the establishment. He said that the reopening of the Memogate case after the passage of six years was “an attempt to make me the target of a propaganda to counter my forthcoming book, titled ‘Reimagining Pakistan’.”

The former envoy said, “Over the past six years, no criminal charges have been initiated against me because I had cleared my name in the case.” He questioned the fact that the SC had not yet given any statement on the nature of the crime committed. He also said that it was surprising that SC was not serving its purpose as a court of final appeal as it was more concerned with becoming a court of first instance.

Furthermore, the former envoy said that the Supreme Court had shelved the original proceedings because the judgement contained a lot of gaps. One example includes, appointing an Inquiry Commission even though the Inquiry Commission Act 1956 gave authorisation to the executive, not the judiciary, to appoint such commissions; appointing high court judges to the commission even though the law did not provide this provision; giving directions to the high court, which the Supreme Court cannot do under the constitution; and appointing the commission under order XXXVI of the Supreme Court rules which had been repealed in 2003.

He also said that the case had been reopened for propaganda purposes only because it was devoid of any legal foundation as was pointed out by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in the initial days of the case.

Haqqani pointed out that Pakistanis and the world have always known that he was targeted for identifying inconsistencies in the world’s sixth largest nuclear power, which was also home to the largest out-of-school population in the world.

Moreover, the former envoy said that judiciary in Pakistan had lost all its credibility and the world held Pakistani judges ‘in low esteem’.

“The actions and judgements of the court have no influence outside the propaganda bubble created inside Pakistan,” he said, adding, “The judges should make efforts to clear thousands of pending cases to provide real justice to the people of Pakistan, instead of wasting precious time on the Memogate case.”