The old order is meant for dissolution and replacement. Judicial activism– in the name of asserting fundamental rights to interfere in the affairs of the state frequently and unnecessarily– is one such order. Parliament has finally realized that it cannot abide any more a status subordinate to the judiciary, especially the higher judiciary.
On April 26, National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervez Ashraf wrote a letter to Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial. The letter conveyed the concerns and sentiments of parliamentarians on some recent decisions of the Supreme Court made by some judges. The allusion was to the bench of judges known now widely as ‘the like-minded bench’.
The Speaker’s letter offers no surprise to anyone following the proceedings of ‘the like-minded bench’ keenly. In recent history, it is the first time parliamentarians have conveyed their reservations on the functioning of the SC. Apparently, the bench works on the assumption that the law is a complicated matter known only to it: the audience is just stupid, ignorant of the law and bereft of even common sense– not to speak of judicial sense. Ostensibly, the ‘like-minded bench’ has misinterpreted the constitution and has failed to subdue its bias. By so doing, the bench has exacerbated the political crisis, which is accentuating the economic crisis.
The Supreme Court Practice and Procedure Bill, 2023 has finally attained the shape of an Act of Parliament. With that Parliament has resumed its status of being the originator of the law, after being the originator of the Constitution.
The parliament has taken years to reach this milestone. The 18th Constitutional Amendment of 2010 remained the major expression of the supremacy of Parliament to rectify anomalies existing (or introduced later on) in the Constitution of 1973. The Amendment ensured the independence of the judiciary by making it as independent of the influence of Parliament as possible. Unfortunately, benevolence was misconstrued as the subordination of the Parliament to the SC.
The age of imposing martial laws is gone. It is not who would run the country; but how the country would be run. Inflated institutions and burgeoning population are the two main challenges Pakistan is faced with. What the Pakistan Army has refused to learn that the USA saved its soldiers by deploying technology, especially the drone technology (both surveillance and missile-laden) to fight the war against its opponents, Al-Qaeda, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal area.
Earlier, the movement for the restoration of the deposed judges had given an added power to the higher judiciary, in the wake of events led to 3 November 2007. The higher judiciary overlooked the fact that without participation of political parties, the restoration of the then deposed judges to their former ranks could not have been possible. That is, it was not only the lawyers who took to the streets to restore the judges but it was also political parties which played a decisive role in getting the judges restored to meet the aspiration of the people who wanted the judges to be restored. At that time, lawyers remained an insufficient power unless backed by civil society. Hence, the strength of both lawyers and civil society culminated in the restoration process.
Seeing the rise, the Army decided to acquiesce, and then it joined hands with the higher judiciary. This was the beginning of the nexus that surfaced in 2017, which overturned the Charter of Democracy (signed in May 2006), and which heralded the hybrid-regime experiment in 2018. From 2018 to 2021, the bond enjoyed coalescence until the country’s economy refused to halt its nosedive. The hybrid foundered on the economic downturn of the country. The Speaker’s letter is a grim reminder to the SC that Parliament is getting intolerant of the interference. The next step might be to invite the like-minded bench to Parliament for giving a presentation, couched as a debriefing.
On April 25, if the Director General ISPR held a press conference to announce reducing defence expenditures (both operational and non-operational) in the face of economic odds, it was expected. The reason is that the hybrid-regime experiment not only shattered the country’s developmental prospects, but it also obliterated the country’s future prospects. Today, Pakistan is so compromised internationally that it cannot oppose the aggression of Russia on Ukraine. Pakistan had to abstain in the United Nations each time on voting against the war. The stance has been Pakistan’s diplomatic low. Otherwise, Pakistan has never reconciled with an aggressor. The reason is simple: the hybrid-regime experiment has brought Pakistan to the verge of economic bankruptcy. To bolster its dying economy, Pakistan is seeking the supply of cheap oil from Russia. Pakistan’s internal realities are dictating Pakistan’s foreign policy objectives.
It is also the first time in the country’s history that the Army has distanced itself from the stand-off between Parliament and the SC. The utterance such as “Woh kambukht martial law lagane ko bhi tayyar naheen na” (He, the army chief, is reluctant to impose martial law), as heard by all Pakistanis, became possible after economic devastation of the country. In the leaked audio conversation, the mother-in-law of Pakistan’s CJ, Mr Justice Umar Ata Bandial, is found lamenting on the inaction of the incumbent army chief, who has otherwise got it announced through the DG ISPR that the Army itself was in economic distress.
No mother-in-law knows that the age of imposing martial laws is gone. It is not who would run the country; it but how the country would be run. Inflated institutions and burgeoning population are the two main challenges Pakistan is faced with. What the Pakistan Army has refused to learn that the USA saved its soldiers by deploying technology, especially the drone technology (both surveillance and missile-laden) to fight the war against its opponents, Al-Qaeda, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal area.
The USA achieved its target of purging the regions from Al-Qaeda operatives. Pakistan has to learn from this strategy. Instead of relying on man power, the Army has to use and rely on technology. The preference should be reducing the number of fallen soldiers, instead of flaunting them to have crossed the 100 mark recently, as the DG ISPR did. The higher number of sacrificed soldiers is not the success but an expression of the failure of strategy employed by the Army in the face of ongoing militancy crisis.
In short, the country is fast bracing for a situation which might be intolerant of the contempt of the parliament.
