Poor judges of men

• Milords, everything and everybody never was, is not and never will be your headache

Milords, with all due respect and solemnity, I want to say a couple of things. My motive is neither to utter contempt nor to defame the guardians of Supreme Law. All I want is to speak my mind out, to verbalise the fears that gnaw at my conscious when I see and hear your remarks and judgments.

Milords, your overreach reminds me of wise but overly ambitious Dr Faustus. Faustus, for those who have never heard of him, wanted to rule the world, he wanted absolute power to do mighty things. However, once in possession of unlimited, unbridled power he ended up playing cheap party tricks to amuse his audience.

Milords, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The many great men before you and many ambitious men after you will seek glory by being on the side of the forgotten, the underdog, the wronged, the brutalised and the victim. Siding with the perished and doomed, for reasons unknown, gives a powerful person great solace and peace of mind. However, for the robed and revered justices there are other ways to deliver the goods other than empty rhetoric bordering on bombast.

Milords, the Big Marble Palace of yours can change realities of your fellow men through prompt judgments, quick and timely disposal of cases at lower tiers, trashing frivolous litigation, weeding out corrupt elements from your ranks, filling thousands of positions in lower judiciary, ensuring that Supreme Judicial Council decides pending references against justices accused of corruption and malpractices and streamlining the whole legal system so that it can deliver justice sans fear or favour.

Milords, I know that you want to right every wrong, amend every excess, mitigate every disaster, punish every culprit, provide quality education to all and sundry

Milords, I know that you want to right every wrong, amend every excess, mitigate every disaster, punish every culprit, provide quality education to all and sundry, make sure that masses are treated humanely, ensure clean water supply and medicine to the needy, remove encroachments, hold the powerful to account, clip the wings of the mighty, and pave the way for an honest, upright, sagacious, wise, truthful, sahi manoon mein Sharif (a truly noble individual) leader. May God help you in all your endeavours. But, dare I say, all this is not at all your headache, Milords. It never was, is not and never will be, Milords.

Milords, I and many others have started to have a few apprehensions. We have started to believe ourselves to be ‘born defectives who are doomed to remain defective’. Our hope to have some redemption, some miracle cure for our maladies is fast vanishing. We, condemned to our Sisyphean struggles, find it hard to even dream a day when we’ll break free of our bondage.

Milords, in the past, whenever we desperately looked for deliverers, we’ve always found them. You are our wise elder, you know what became of those deliverers. You know what happened to giants like Ayub, Bhutto, Yahya, Iffi Chaudhary, Mush, and others. Some died and saved themselves, those who are still alive became dwarfs entangled in delusions of their own design.

Milords, when the lines that guard one power from the other get blurred and are repeatedly being trampled upon, things go awry and chaos ensues. It was the mightiness and infallibility of King that sustained ancient realms. Now, we have legislature, executive and judiciary to act in their designated spheres and do what they are destined to do.

Milords, your lordships of Big Marble Palace have set multiple Herculean tasks. Honourable Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar and his brothers in gowns are once again back in the limelight. Supreme Court, under CJ Nisar, has shed the aloofness and silence that dawned upon it after times and deeds of former CJ Iftikhar Chaudhry. Finally, the people have something and someone to compare and contrast with the Chaudhary Court.

Milords, your Big Marble Palace brims with life, litigants, chatter, journos, khudai khidmatgars, policemen in hiding, Dr Doom, state ministers who’ve said things they shouldn’t have uttered along with good folks who’ve reached the top court after their long, arduous walk through subordinate and higher courts in their quest for justice. All of them are sad as their desires, wishes and hopes had dashed to the ground. With 1.8 million pending cases before courts of all tier in the country, it is about time that that your Lordships do something about this mammoth that is growing and getting bigger every day.

Milords, to paraphrase Justice Khosa’s remarks in the Nehal Hashmi contempt judgment, the judges of the apex court are neither weaklings nor feeble at heart. They could neither be frightened nor browbeaten by verbal assaults or naked threats. Milords, taking suo motu notices of funerals passing through litter, regularising and making it mandatory for ChingChi rickshaws to have licenses, and halting construction of grid station in place of a park are beyond your expertise, below your stature and out of your domain.

Milords, God has bestowed upon you the power to do justice. And there is no way that a group of poor judges of men, oblivious of their responsibilities, always overreaching, never considerate of where their authority ends can do justice, either among themselves or between others.