Daily Times

Obstruction of justice is a crime. The decision is clear. The JIT report of Nawaz Sharif’s corruption was released, it is a damning document for him. Not only does it detail the illegal property of Sharifs, it also detailed the offshore companies through which the transactions were made. What happened at the Supreme Court? The highest forum of justice declared him dishonest against non-declaration of his UAE aqama, there was not a single word about his major corruption and embezzlement of the national exchequer. How strange? Why a comprehensive decision against his corruption was not issued? Was it a special leverage for him to fightback the decision?

Irwin R Kaufman said:”The judicial system is the most expensive machine ever invented for finding out what happened and what to do about it.”

Now the Sharifs are eagerly seeking more legal help, and judges are ready to grant them relief. It paints a picture of judge as an unethical personnel with no regard for the rule of law. In the JIT report, we see a head of the state who doesn’t deserve to be. Then we see attempts over and over to obstruct justice, which in some cases succeed.

So is the case of Asif Ali Zardari, all reports evidently stand against him; he had been managing relief through judiciary, he claims openly and clearly. The example of Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry’s action against Zardari unmistakably explains the game plan played by the highest chair of judiciary for the highest chair of the government involved in the highest rate of the burglary of the national exchequer. He also provided him leverage by sacrificing somebody else and save his seat. Who was the escape goat for Zardari and Chaudry? Yousaf Raza Ghillani, another corrupt head of parliament in the ill-fated history of Pakistan. He also escaped all liabilities through the decision of the highest legal forum.

John Rutlege says:”So long as we have an independent and honest judiciary, the great interest of the people will be safe.”

The question is: What are we going to do about it? Obstruction of justice is a crime. If Sharif or Zardari have committed that crime, they are criminals. If some judge has “managed” obstruction of justice, he is also a criminal. Are we simply going to allow a criminal to sit inparliament and face no consequence, or a judge to hold the seat, don’t deliver and play with the legal system to favour culprits? Are we simply going to let the next election be the point at which Sharifor Zardari is punished or rewarded? Will the judges let that happen against their will or for some other reason, best known to them? Is this justice and for what the justice department is backed by 210 million people?

Parliament should initiate impeachment proceedings against the unethically corrupt judges, corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, army personnel and businessmen and their families

“A judiciary loses its value and service to the community if there is no public confidence in its decision making.”It is maddening to think that we are at such a pass. But now people’s mind is made up: they openly say impeach them all. Parliament should play a vital role in that. They should pass a resolution against unethical, corrupt judges, and impeach them, duly endorsed and signed by the Senate. There may be a hindrance if parliament votes to impeach judges with controversial judgements, the Supreme Judicial Council would never vote to convict and remove them. This is the “failed impeachment” theory.

But there is no such thing as a failed impeachment. An impeachment exists separately from removal. Impeachment is akin to an indictment with the trial, which could convict and remove, taking place in parliament or Senate. Though parliament and Senate have never voted to convict but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It is not a mission impossible, it can be done if parliament and Senate are sincere, and I am sure we have many sincere parliamentarians just like we have many sincere judges and other personnel holding government offices.

So an impeachment vote in parliament and Senate, to this point, has been the strongest rebuke Pakistan is willing to give a judge, a politician or a parliamentarian. And once a judge is impeached, the judiciary will start delivering justice not favours. It is a chastisement unto itself. It is the people’s house making a stand for its people. Once judges start delivering justice, process of development will automatically start.

An impeachment would be promising and may increase public support to impeach unethical judges besides people like Zardari, Sharif and other such politicians. It would also be better that they and their families be restricted to hold any public office for life time. People are tired of all the fear and trepidation. They are sick at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by both these individuals in the highest office of the land. But,will that sickness give birth to action? Not if the last two decades are our guide. People are afraid of judges and these two politicians; it seems as if they not inadvertently but deliberately helped each other to increase the chances of re-election with their musical chairs game of power.But this is not 1990s. Until 1996, CNN was the only cable news network. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram didn’t exist. Google wasn’t founded until 1998. Cellphones were in their infancy, and a few people had them. Now it’s all open, people get the news before it happens. I’m afraid of lawlessness and the horrible precedent it would set if judges don’t deliver, if they don’t stand for justice instead of favours.

Parliament should initiate impeachment proceedings against the unethicallycorrupt judges, politicians, bureaucrats, army personnel and businessmen and their families.

To ignore a judge’s repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation into the corruption of known politicians, his disloyal behaviour would inflict great and lasting damage on the country, and it would suggest that both the current and the future head of the state would be free to abuse their power in similar ways. Such inaction enshrines the idea that the head of the state is above the law. “Just as politicians ought not to be judges, so too judges ought not to be politicians.”Thomas Paine wrote in 1776: “In absolute governments the king is the law, in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

Who will we let be the king in this country: judges, politicians or the law?

The writer is a technocrat and a political affairs analyst