Supreme Court’s verdict on the inglorious memogate case

Supreme Court’s verdict on the inglorious memogate case

In the abrupt reactions to the Supreme Court’s short order on the maintainability of the infamous memogate issue, it looks that the verdict could be come out to be one of the contentious in the country’s history.

The decision by the apex court comes at a time when a delicate elected government is working hard to complete its constitutional term. At the same time, the civilian government issued a warning, asking the army not to react as a state within a state.

The verdict started a debate whether judiciary should firmly interpret the law and constitution while keeping their eyes close to the irrelevant concerns like national security or follow the opp0site path.

The detailed verdict will have to read carefully to find whether the case has insinuations for media or not. It will have serious forks if the investigation concludes that the memogate was genuine and was conceived by someone in the ruling lot.

On the other hand, in case the memo is proved hoax, this will show how an impish person (Mansoor Ijaz) can waste precious time of the Supreme Court, politicians and media.

On one end, the petitioners welcomed the decision of apex court while on the other end, a few of respectable figures in the legal fraternity, strongly criticized the verdict.

Asma Jehangir is foremost critic who was an enthusiastic supporter of independent judiciary and also a former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA). She is too one of the leading champions of human rights in Pakistan. In this particular case,
she is a party, as she is counsel of former ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani.

Advocate Tariq Mehmud is another strong critical voice against the verdict who too participated in the lawyers’ movement.

Asma believes that the decision puts the civilian supremacy under the army establishment and provided national security more priority than basic rights. At the same time it compromised on individual right to justice, she added.

The two critics were of the opinion that the apex court had given the applicants more than they request for. Regardless of the opposition the best step is to accept the verdict and wait for the detailed judgment to have a better understanding of the decision.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=7952

Posted by Faisal Farooq on Jan 2 2012. Filed under Opinion, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry