The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bar Council has called a province-wide strike today (Friday) against Federal Law Minister Farogh Naseem for linking the annual grants to bar associations to their passing resolutions against Mr Justice Qazi Faez Isa. This sheds a new light on the recent Lahore High Court Bar Association resolution which called for the accountability of both generals and judges. The allegation of arm-twisting with the use of public money is something which the PTI used to condemn vociferously while in opposition.
The government, or rather its legal team, seems to be in all sorts of difficulties, after being defeated in court. Senator Naseem seems to have taken very hard the defeat of the government in the review petition by Mr Justice Isa against the Supreme Court order which declared the presidential reference against him untenable. The reference came after Mr Justice Isa authored a judgment in which he passed strictures on a particular organization in connection with the Faizabad sit-in. The government filed a review petition upon the later Supreme Court order, which was returned by the Supreme Court’s registrar. The Law Ministry had said that it would file the petition afresh after removing those objections, but instead of that, the present course seems to have been followed.
It is clear that there is now an attempt to wean away the bar from supporting Mr Justice Isa. It must be remembered that the original petition against the presidential reference had been filed by the bar councils, but if the bar associations condemn him, it may become easier to stop him becoming Chief Justice of Pakistan, a post he will hold during the next general election. It is also obvious that the legal defeat rankled, and there is a rather childish attempt to reverse. It would be laughable if those attempting the reversal could not exercise so much power. The government should realize that there will be disastrous consequences for the entire state if one assaults the other this way. The courts are supposed to be the final arbiters of the Constitution; they must be allowed to do their job, with the help of the Bar, and there should be no personal resentments.
