Asma Jehangir and Supreme Court

Asma Jehangir and Supreme Court

The Judicial Commission constituted on Supreme Court’s verdict in the memogate case has made an unsavory beginning.

Two key characters in the gruesome episode of that shook the national politics; ISI Director Lt. Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha and former ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani were conspicuous by their absence provoking anger of the panel.

Still more absorbing was Asma’s angry announcement that she was pulling out of the case as Haqqani’s counsel while citing foul play. For obvious reasons, General James Jones was also not there while the commission directed provision of the central player
Mansoor Ijaz.

One of the blunt human right activists, Asma had voluntarily presented herself for counseling Hussain Haqqani after she was outraged by the Supreme Court’s hasty action on Nawaz Sharif’s petition to order probe and bar Haqqani from leaving the country.

Apparently the apex court had started a parallel probe to be conducted by Parliamentary Committee on National Security already announced by the Prime Minister. The initiative taken by the PML-N chief politicized the entire case despite consensus on the demand
the case must be investigated.

A debate started that whether the Supreme Court was a right forum to probe the entire matter. Asma pleaded Haqqani’s case and felt satisfied that the court had given her full hearing. But the short order on its maintainability made her annoyed and she reacted
with unprecedented aggression, expressing lack of confidence on judges as well as commission.

Her allegation that the apex court judges have allowed themselves to be influenced by the security establishment is very worrying. Her key concern which has also made stunned is that the Supreme Court has made national security as part of the fundamental
rights.

The petitioners could neither prove any violation of fundamental rights under Article 184(3), as their petition claimed, nor could  they proved Haqqani’s alleged role in the memogate. Nevertheless, they were given what they wanted.

Asma felt intrigued that not a single judge differed. The court went even beyond what the petitioners had demanded. Asma was the key figure in the restoration of judicial movement.

Since the reinstatement of the higher judiciary, it has delivered some historic verdicts, particularly July 31, 2009, when they declared Musharraf’s emergency and PCO unconstitutional. The masses have great confidence in the apex court just whenever institutions
had failed to perform according to their expectations.

Now that the court’s order on formation of judicial commission has already been implemented, one can hope that the investigations would be impartial and independent of superfluous influence.

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Posted by Faisal Farooq on Jan 3 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