Daily Times

Sir: Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui has gone on record and said that the judges that are serving the country are not safe within it. Their phones are tapped and they are under immense pressure.

He said this while listening to a case about missing persons. The Justice has gone on the record — while putting himself at risk — to talk about the so-called judicial process, where benches are cherry picked by our agencies so that their desired outcome is the only one on the table.

So many people go missing in Pakistan that even “enforced disappearances” have become a joke. One person returns and two more go missing in the same day.

Our democracy is also a product of the will of those that must not be named. And now we have sitting judges making it clear who calls the shot.

Why do we bother with this sham at all? If it is the will of one entity then so be it. Why do we pretend to have some semblance of control over this situation?

The reality is that the global order has changed. Dictatorships are no longer cool enough and often result in mass mayhem. The powers that be haven’t gotten this far on their naivety, they smelled the air long before it went sour.

We have swung from a hard coup into a permanent soft one.

ARSHAD MIR GULLU

Karachi

Published in Daily Times, July 22^nd 2018.