- Treading the path of Iftikhar Chaudhary?
The CJ says that he has resolved to struggle to provide basic necessities to the people which include supply of clean drinking water, clear environment, pure milk, hygienic meat and to safeguard the right of the farmers to get reasonable price for their crops. In the modern era complex society, this is not a single saviour’s job. The courts can very well direct the government to take necessary measures to secure the common man’s rights and may reprimand it for not heeding the court’s directives but if the judges try to micromanage things themselves their main task of dispensing justice would suffer leading to further piling up of cases and addition to people’s miseries.
Any action that brings the court into confrontation with the executive and Parliament in pursuit of social well-being would be counter-productive. The court needs to be reminded that hundreds of thousands of supplicants suffer from delayed justice, which amounts to denial of justice, also from huge expenses incurred in pursuit of their cases and the rampant corruption prevailing in lower judiciary. The priority being given to political cases has made the apex court deviate from one of its core tasks i.e., the reform of the judicial system.
To earn people’s respect, justice must be even-handed rather than selective. As the President IHCBA pointed out during the CJ’s visit, lawyers were arguing that when the courts were passing bold decisions on other issues why references against members of superior judiciary were not decided with a similar speed? Why did the SJC keep waiting till the retirement of an accused judge and then disposed off the reference against him for being infructuous? Many others share the view. The efficiency displayed by the apex court in disposing off the cases against Nawaz Sharif has led to complaints that this smells of vengeance and partiality. The SC should not be seen to have turned into a party against politicians. If it does, this is likely to lead to confrontation, destabilisation of the system and the shattering of the dream of people’s well-being.
