If a section of the people praised Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, for his judicial activism, others including many in the legal community questioned his conduct as the chief justice inside and outside of the court. He was no one’s hero.
To some he is a maverick who took suo moto action on the “missing persons” issue and a disturbingly average man to some others. For the average Pakistani he was a chip off the old block, someone comfortable with the country’s power culture. He misused authority to appoint his son in the police service and sought unnecessary protocol.
So when the lawyer Naeem Bokhari’s charge list against the chief justice appeared on Feb. 16 in the form of a letter, there were not many to defend him.
There was, of course, general expectation that President Musharraf would use his constitutional authority to file a reference against the chief justice with the Supreme Judicial Council. It was expected to be a politically tame event.
Yet suddenly on March 9 all of this seemed to have changed. As if the chief justice was the symbol of the judiciary’s honor, almost the entire nation including the legal community, the media and the politicians came to his rescue as Musharraf ruled him “nonfunctional.” Interestingly the president’s decision to move a reference against him in the Supreme Judicial Council on charges of misuse of power and misconduct did not become the focus of the initial reaction. But the move to render the chief justice “ineffective” and keep him in the president’s camp office for four hours did. At the camp the prime minister and others wielding state power also met with the chief justice.
News of other moves including preventing the chief justice from going to the Supreme Court, keeping him under virtual house arrest, removal of the flag from his residence, attempting to cut off his contact from the outside world and fork-lifting the official cars from his residence began trickling out.
In short he was treated almost like an indicted man. All this even before the reference was sent to the Supreme Judicial Council.
It is difficult to detect any support in nonofficial circles for the president’s move to suspend the chief justice. It has irked the nation. Not for unthinking and merely emotional reasons. The nation’s verdict against the way the chief justice is being treated is based on rational and valid grounds.
One, the president moved unconstitutionally to suspend the chief justice. The president does have the authority to move a reference against the chief justice but no clause, however ingenuously interpreted, gives him the authority to suspend him. So any action that is partially unconstitutional is essentially unconstitutional. People are therefore critical of an unconstitutional move.
Two, the people disapprove of the blatantly immoral application of state power in dealing with the chief justice against whom the president was planning to file a reference. Force was applied to treat him like a criminal. The message seems to be that either you accept our verdict, our decision or else you are a marked man, a criminal. People reject this message. Interestingly the use of state power has had the opposite effect. The more the state acted to indict him, the more the media and the legal community and the people came forward to defend the man.
Three, what the people saw in the whole affair was a mockery of legal and constitutional process. In the camp office the ruling establishment decided to sit in judgment and treat him like an indicted man. This killed the constitutional process in place to remove a judge indulging in alleged misconduct and misuse of power.
Four, the public is questioning the move as one that is inconsistent with the norms of fair play. There is widespread abuse of constitutional power and authority in Pakistan, with virtually every one connected with government indulging in illegal perks and privileges. Why single out the chief justice? And what about those who facilitated the chief justice’s alleged misuse of power and abuse of authority?
Despite the endless abuse of power in Pakistan beginning in the 1950s, ordinary Pakistanis do not give up hopes of changes in the system. They continue to seek rule of law. The nation’s reaction to the move against the chief justice once again underscores this fact.
