LAHORE: Less than three weeks after his retirement, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari criticised former chief justice Gulzar Ahmed, who in the last months of his tenure went on a demolition spree in a bid to address the massive land-use irregularities prevalent all across Karachi, implying the actions were beyond the jurisdiction of the courts.
Ahmed repeatedly came down hard on, and expressed his displeasure at, the Sindh government of Bilawal’s party over its lack of progress in the domain, thereby, making the precious real estate of the provincial capital a theatre of blatant racketeering.
Addressing an event organised by the Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA), Bilawal said a chief justice should be deciding constitutional issues instead of deciding the prices of “samosa or sugar”.
He said that instead of deciding issues about the fundamentals of legal framework or “confronting a full-blown assault on democracy that has resulted in this selected regime, some judges took it upon themselves to busy themselves, the courts and the legal community on deciding which building should be demolished and which should stay”.
“The judiciary of Pakistan is a place for the battle of legal ideas […] it is not a place for us to decide where or where not to build a dam.”
He said the time is the worst for the parliament. “Pakistan was founded by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a lawyer by profession […] former prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, also a barrister, gave the country its first constitution.”
“There could be no democracy without the rule of law,” he said, adding: “Therefore, the supremacy of the constitution in the country is a must.”
He said his mother slain prime minister Benazir Bhutto and his father were implicated in fabricated cases. “But later, courts set them free which vindicated their innocence,” he declared.
He went on to add Zulfiqar’s hanging was a judicial murder. “But he still lives in people’s hearts,” he added.
Bilawal further observed no nation can prosper without the rule of law because it acts as a bridge between the people and the government. He claimed it was Zulfiqar who made Pakistan a democracy and gave it its incumbent Constitution.
“Democracy is not possible without law,” he added
The PPP chief further said his party believed in rule of law and that was why they played an important role in the restoration of the judiciary.
Bilawal said he himself was “a witness and victim of our justice system”, narrating his trips to the courts as a child and to prison to visit his father.
Zardari served as president from 2008 until 2013 and has long been the subject of corruption allegations.
Never popular and always shrouded in controversy, Zardari — who was jailed for 11 years for corruption — stepped down from the president’s office in 2013. But he has continued to serve as co-chairman of the opposition PPP.
He has repeatedly dismissed allegations he had a hand in the scheme, calling the government an instrument of the military and labelling the prime minister the army’s “blue-eyed boy”.
Bilawal added: “The responsibility to protect the rule of law falls on us — all politicians, lawyers and judges. Sadly, history shows that we have failed to discharge our responsibilities and more often than not, the scales of justice often side with the oppressors.”
The PPP chairman said expectations from the lawyers’ movement of 2007 were not met, adding that the superior judiciary should be an avenue for protection of the weak and poor.
