Daily Times

For many analysts, the Supreme Court’s verdict on the high profile political case seeking disqualification of PTI chairman Imran Khan and general secretary Jahangir Tareen did not come as a surprise.

Having ousted PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif from the Prime Minister’s office in a judgement criticised for its weak legal grounds, the court appeared to have pandered to the political sentiment of a section predominantly occupying the voluble space in media and the chatterati with Friday’s verdict.
Throughout the Panama proceedings against the Sharif family, the court had allowed all sides to play with a sub-judice matter. Both the political parties locking their legal horns inside the court, continued with the pugnacious media circus unabashedly, every single evening. Failing to issue a gag order, the court remained a spectator without hiding its own eagerness to be in the headlines through one-liners thrown carelessly during the hearings. The politically charged environment thus created, proved to be an irreversible process.

Apprehending a judgement against their wishes, the petitioners, Sheikh Rasheed and Imran Khan, had started accusing PML-N of having offered heavy bribes to the bench. Instead of taking any notice on it, the court apparently fell prey to the tactic and incessantly offered one-sided caustic remarks. The verdict, in such a charged political backdrop, was destined to make people raise questions.

So it happened with Nawaz Sharif openly challenging the court, which did not go unnoticed. When the review petition was filed by the Sharif family, the court voiced its strong response to Sharif’s critical speeches.

Against this background, many independent analysts had been anticipating a kind of judgement that was announced on Friday.

Both the cases were different in the sense that the personalities being tried had very different backgrounds. One was a third-time incumbent with two incomplete terms, while the other had, there was the head of the opposition party with no experience of statecraft or public office. But the difference ended there. The case turned out to be identical in the sense that both the personalities were facing similar allegations of non-declaration of assets in their nomination forms.

Comparing the judgement in the Panama Papers case to the latest verdict, some very interesting observations can be noted. In the former case, the court stretched the definition of ‘assets’ to the receivable goods even if they stand un-received, based on a law dictionary. The court also appeared to have deduced that since the respondent had enjoyed terms in office, the riches he owned might have been ill gotten and through unlawful means. Which was not even a possibility in Imran Khan’s case because he never remained in any pubic office.

In Imran Khan’s case, however, the court has given precedence to the ‘intentions’ while making declarations, which are termed honest mistakes in his case but mala fide in Sharif’s case. In fact, the argument about intentions has not even been invoked in the Sharif case. No effort was made to determine the intention or giving a benefit of doubt based on the lack of knowledge about the intentions. In short, both verdicts appear to be based on different treatment of similar scenarios.

What is significant is that through this verdict, a three-membered bench has set aside the decision of a five-member bench on the issue of the non-declaration of assets. However, the court does not seem unaware of possible criticism, which it seems to have been expecting in the wake of the verdict announcement. The additional note of Justice Faisal Arab in Imran Khan’s case is evident of the fact that the court was going out of its way to justify its departure from the Panama bench’s verdict.

The second verdict was about the disqualification of Jahangir Khan Tareen for being ‘not honest’ because of his non-declaration of assets and misstatement before the court. The legal basis of this decision is also weak, just as it was in case of Nawaz Sharif. It would be interesting to watch whether Jahangir Tareen gets any relief after filing review petition, which the Sharif family could not get.

On the same day, a bit earlier than the Imran Khan and Jahangir Tareen verdicts, Supreme Court had announced another controversial order rejecting NAB’s petition to open Hudaibiya Paper Mill case against Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif. NAB made this request in the wake of earlier decision of the five-membered bench in Panama Papers case, whereby Justice Khosa had made a detailed case for opening of the Hudaibiya reference. The three-member bench, however, decided to go against it, and rejected NAB’s request, which appeared to be a balancing act.

All in all, PTI appears to be the winner in the sense that it managed to save its leader, which will lionise it further and help in the upcoming electoral campaign. The loss of Jahangir Tareen might prove to be temporary if SC responds in line with its last one year’s tradition of going all out to please the ‘street sentiment’ that is gauged by the tone adopted by couple of anti-government TV channels. In any case, retirement from the Parliament wouldn’t mean retirement from political life for Tareen.

The marginal benefit that the Sharifs can milk from these verdicts would be the declaration of victory based on the part of judgement that endorses PML-N’s insistence on ECP jurisdiction on foreign funding case against PTI, plus the validation of its assertion that the court was biased against Sharifs. This would be the sole take-away for it to go into electoral race for 2018.

It is a pity that in this game of winners and losers, the judiciary has lost some ground given the kind of narrative court’s own conduct has generated. That this decision is being viewed by some independent observers as a ‘balancing act’, is an indictment of the principle of impartiality of judicial process. Even if it was not a balancing act, it boosts Nawaz Sharif’s stance that he was ousted due to political rather than legal reasons . It is a time for all institutions to consider why judicialization of politics is not in public interest. Most of all the judiciary itself.

Published in Daily Times, December 16^th 2017.