Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The upcoming general elections may prove to be a referendum against judiciary, warned Senator Farhatullah Babar on Tuesday while delivering his farewell address in the Senate. “I want to request the honorable judges that don’t tread a path which may result in a referendum against you,” said the senator, who is among those retiring this month. He warned against what he said ‘judicialization of politics and politicization of the judiciary’. He said it will be a disaster if the election year is allowed to become the year of referendum against judiciary. He said he was also pained to see two states in the country – one de facto and the other de jure – often working at cross purposes.

The de facto calls the shots but refuses to submit to accountability, he said, lamenting the failure of parliament to bring legislation for accountability of all including judges and generals. Babar said he could not applaud the chief justice of Pakistan swearing that he had no political agenda, or the judges quoting from poetry instead of the constitution and the law. “When my village elder tells me that the constitution is supreme, I accept it. But when he goes on to tell me that constitution is what he says and not what is written in it then I am appalled,” he said, adding that when dignity of courts is upheld by brandishing the contempt law rather than by the force of arguments, it is time to ponder. The outgoing senator said that he was distressed that all political parties including his own demanding accountability of all suddenly backtracked on it. “We must resolve this contradiction of a state-within-state if Pakistan is not to be devoured by it,” he said, and warned against attempts to roll back 18th Amendment and the provincial autonomy.

Published in Daily Times, March 7^th 2018.