- An eventful stint
No doubt outgoing Chief Justice Saqib Nisar will be remembered, along with former CJ Iftikhar Ch, as one of the more controversial chiefs to grace the judiciary. And that, of course, is primarily because of his suo motto outreach. Indeed, he minced few words while defending his “judicial activism” the other day, implying that he could not possibly have been more sincere with the country; and that, in the absence of proper oversight mechanisms on part of the state, it was up to his activism to put things right as far as possible.
Some of those stung by the judiciary during his tenure, like former PML-N head Nawaz Sharif, have openly accused the courts, under his watch, of merely being puppets whose strings were pulled from behind high walls of other institutions. Others, though, like Jahangir Tareen of PTI have gulped their disqualification with more grace. Yet nobody can take the credit of his progressive steps away from him. He has clearly gone out of his way to ensure that the common man gets the bare minimum service delivery promised by the state. And however much he was criticised for visiting hospitals, etc, he did get institutions to pull their socks up. Aristocratic entrepreneurs can sing the free market mantra all they want, but the struggling working classes will always remember him for making school education, among other things, more affordable for the common man.
He is also the first man to highlight Pakistan’s water scarcity at such a high level. Whatever little progress we make on the dam front from here, much of the credit must go to Saqib Nisar. Sure, he stepped on one too many toes, sometimes unfairly, but it has been a rare sight to watch some of the highest and mightiest of the land humbled before the black-and-white of the law. It is now for the new head of the judiciary to decide how much of this activist outlook he would like the institution to maintain. But hopefully CJ Nisar’s successor would be more responsive to the problems of one institution that he did not quite shake into proper action – the judiciary itself – and some attention will finally be paid to the millions of outstanding cases awaiting justice.
