Former Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar is back in the news cycle for all the wrong reasons, as is usually the case with him. Apart from making a cryptic statement that a book with the ‘complete story’ will be released after his death, he claimed that his ‘WhatsApp’ was hacked, a feat that most experts maintain is near impossible to achieve without using some very specific equipment and skill. However, the operative part of Nisar’s abrupt jump into the ongoing political hullabaloo is him confirming that former PM and PTI chairman Imran Khan called him two weeks back seeking ‘help and guidance’ in the plethora of legal troubles he faces currently. He did not bother to divulge whether or not he provided any ‘legal aid’ to Imran Khan in this particular instance but his actions and decisions during his more than two years as CJP certainly offered immense relief, paving the way for the latter to reach the highest echelons of power. Imran Khan reaching out to Nisar in such desperate times is therefore no surprise. Nisar’s role in the removal of Nawaz Sharif from power through a SC decision of disqualification under Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution, that has over time been exposed for the engineered farce that it was, disrupted an ongoing process of progression and evolution in democracy which was crucial at the time and had it continued, the country’s condition would be very different, for the better, currently.
Allegations of his dealings and interactions with the military leadership of the time, COAS Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa and ISI chief Lt Gen Faiz Haqmeed, the muscle that took ‘Project Imran’ to its logical end and the spectacular implosion that followed, cannot be ignored either. The judicial-military nexus that aided and abetted in the manufacturing of a regime that was unsustainable due to its unconstitutional murky origins and realised as just another failed experiment due to the incompetency of all involved should serve as a reminder to anyone with any notions of repeating the same mistake. It is obvious therefore that Mr Khan’s fierce attacks on his former handlers, intensifying only after they left office, have nothing to do with a newfound principled pursuit of a more constitutionally-bound system of government, but are rather just a calculated pressure tactic to get back to the system of the ‘old days’ that he enjoyed greatly. It is a gut-wrenching tragic irony that the judiciary, a branch of government that must protect and interpret the constitution in letter and spirit, has done a majority of the damage to it.
