ISLAMABAD: Slamming a decision this week by a court to ban popular social media platform TikTok, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry Wednesday stressed the need for judicial reforms to improve the fragile economy.
The Sindh High Court on Monday temporarily suspended TikTok, citing objectionable content on the shortform video application. This is the third time the ByteDance platform has been banned in Pakistan, following a shutdown in March and a brief 10-day suspension in October last.
“If judicial reforms are not carried out, the country will never be able to get out of the economic crisis [it is facing] already the country is suffering billions of dollars in losses at the hands of such judicial activism,” he lamented in a tweet.
عدالتی اصلاحات نہ کی گئیں تو ملک اقتصادی بحران سے کبھی باہر نہیں نکل سکے گا کل سے TikTok کو بین کرنے اور نیشنل بینک کے صدر کو ہٹانے کے فیصلے پڑہ کر سر چکرا گیا ہے کہ ہماری عدالتیں کیا کر رہی ہیں ؟ پہلے ہی یہ ملک ایسے جوڈیشل ایکٹوازم کے ہاتھوں اربوں ڈالر کے نقصانات برداشت کر رہاہے
— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) June 30, 2021
The minister also deplored Tuesday’s order of the Islamabad High Court order that set aside appointments of National Bank of Pakistan president Arif Usmani and chairman of its board of directors Zubair Soomro, ruling that the appointments had been made in violation of the law.
“My head is spinning since yesterday after reading the court verdict on the ban on Tiktok and the removal of National Bank of Pakistan president,” he said.
State functionaries usually restrain from commenting on court orders to avoid the threats of being in contempt of court. A 2012 report of the Human Rights Watch accused the judges of using their contempt powers to prevent the media from airing programming critical of the judiciary.
