Daily Times

The Punjab government has booked more than 500 people in connection with the recent protests in Lahore and Islamabad. Among them are Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) chief Khadim Rizvi and senior party leader Azfal Qadri. All face allegations of rioting, disrupting the peace and destroying property. Missing from the charge-sheet, however, are indictments related to incitement to religious hatred and murder.

This failure by the state to stand firmly with the judiciary to uphold a verdict delivered by the highest court in the land is nothing short of a travesty. For it puts judges directly in the firing line; effectively allowing the courts to become tarnished by political hues. Indeed, Asia Bibi’s lawyer — the man credited with extricating her from the hangman’s noose — has now fled the country over fears for his life. Yet despite everything he has vowed to continue fighting her cause. Of course, this would not be necessary had the Centre not kowtowed to the TLP demand of filing a review petition challenging the Supreme Court (SC) ruling. And now Rizvi has taken to social media to promise more of the same unrest if the ‘appeal’ is not to his liking.

This not only undermines established concepts of due process — but also Imran Khan’s commitment to the supremacy of the rule of law and a revitalised judiciary equipped to tend to massive backlogs. And while it is right and just that the government has vowed to ensure Asia Bibi’s safety, though in reality this is the very minimum expected, what about members of the judiciary?

For all state institutions to be on the same page, solidarity must be there; the pledge to defend that runs somewhere along the lines of one for all and all for one. This is absent in Naya Pakistan.  And the fact that this is the current state of play some 11 years after Pakistan’s last bout of emergency rule makes it all the more painful. *

Published in Daily Times, November  4^th 2018.