Daily Times

Sir: Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Saqib Nisar and the chief of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had to publicly deny allegations of pre-poll rigging (July 2, 2018). The image of our apex institutions has been sullied by a plethora of petitions from political parties.

Lately, three petitions, seeking ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s trial under treason charges were dismissed by the court as not maintainable. The charge was that the ousted PM’s remarks about the Mumbai carnage compromised national security. The US’s initial reaction to Mumbai blasts reflected skepticism. Later, Davidsson in his book concluded that the whole process of investigation and prosecution was opaque at best.

Unfortunately, over-ebullient remarks by serving Director General Shuja Pasha of the ISI enabled India to vilify Pakistan.Veteran journalist C. Christine Fair writes, in her article `Pakistan: A Perfidious ally in the war on terror’, `But according to some reports, the current director general of the ISI, Shuja Pasha acknowledged that persons connected to the ISI were involved in the attacks but insisted that the operation was rogue’. Fair’s article is included in papers edited by Mohammad Ayoob and Etga Ulgar in book `Assessing the War on Terror’ (see page 85). Fair actually quoted from Woodword’s book Obama’s Wars (pp. 46-47).

The lesson is that influential persons, both khaki and civil, should be less glib-tongued. The petitioners are reminded Justice Muneer’s prophetic remarks ‘when politics enters the portals of Justice, democracy, its cherished inmate, walks out by the backdoor’.

The present chief minister of KPK also advised (March 1, 2018) political parties to `resolve their disputes through Parliament, instead of taking it to the courts as there were chances of imposition of martial laws when political disputes were not resolved through political means’.

ANVER JAVED

Islamabad

Published in Daily Times, July 3^rd 2018.