There’s a long list of Justice Munir’s progeny—decked out in regal robes—of shameless justices acting as judicial ‘facilitators’ of Pakistani Bonapartes and arming their assault at the ramparts of democracy with legal protection to justify their illegal acts of subterfuge – PhotoHum News English

 

What’s Faez Isa Up To?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

The history of Pakistan’s top judiciary has more holes than the famous Swiss Cheese. But these are holes of ignominy: of pandering, shamelessly to those who brazenly violated the law of the land and its Constitution; of providing legal cover to their ultra-legal antics that destroyed democracy and diseased democratic culture at its roots.

The rot started with Justice Muhammad Munir, the head of Pakistan’s first Federal Court. He was the one who upheld and justified Governor-General Ghulam Mohammad’s brazen act of dissolving the First Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, in 1954. Justice Munir not only sanctified Ghulam Mohammad’s illegal move but, coupled with it, shamelessly invented the bogey of ‘necessity,’ paving the way for military soldiers-of-fortunes and bounty hunters, such as General Ayub Khan, General Yehya Khan, General Ziaul Haq and last, but not least, General Pervez Musharraf to violate Pakistan’s Constitution with impunity.

There’s a long list of Justice Munir’s progeny—decked out in regal robes—of shameless justices acting as judicial ‘facilitators’ of Pakistani Bonapartes and arming their assault at the ramparts of democracy with legal protection to justify their illegal acts of subterfuge.

However, the incumbent head-honcho of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Justice Faez Isa, with his litany of shenanigans and acrobatics, seems to have already made his illustrious predecessors, in the gallery of rogues, look like piddling amateurs.

Just the other day, a friend of mine pointedly asked me to share with him my take of Faez Isa’a character by saying that he had read deeply into the pock-holed history of Pakistan’s apex court, time and again, blessing Bonapartes and military adventurers with legal benedictions. But, he added, Faez Isa’s ruthless shenanigans and antics belonged to a different world.

‘How could a man, presiding over the top court of the country and supposedly tethered to his primary obligation of safeguarding the Constitution of Pakistan at all costs, against any incursions from any quarters to subvert it, be as callously shameless as Faez Isa?’ My friend ruefully asked me.

I was hard put to adequately answer my friend’s pertinent question, which pointedly focused on the ignoble history of our supposed ‘dispensers of justice’ so arguably shamelessly siding with military adventurers in their subversion of fundamentals of rule of law.

But no doubt that Faez Isa’s record as the supposed ‘guardian’ of Pakistan’s Constitution speaks volumes of his ambition to stay at the top of the apex court, for as long as possible, by any means, by hook or crook. That’s his priority, numero uno. But parallel to it is his second priority: to stay on the right side of the pack of trigger-happy generals, of GHQ, holding Pakistan to ransom to their fascist agenda. Faez Isa is the best bet for these incumbent Bonapartes. In him, they have a reliable comrade-in-arms and they would be loath to see him go. Hence a tempting playing field for Isa to play all kinds of dirty tricks, without fear of his bluff being called out. He has every assurance of the generals’ unstinted patronage for whatever tricks he may come up with to perpetuate himself and beef up the extra-constitutional authority of his facilitators and comrades-in-crime.

Shame is, obviously, not a word figuring anywhere in Isa’s lexicon.

If there was any iota of shame in him, Isa should have resigned the day after he was humiliated and insulted by that daring young salesman of an Islamabad Bakery where Isa, with his family, had gone shopping for some donuts.

To many a partisan of the Bonapartes and their legal ward, Faez Isa, the young salesman may have crossed the red line between decency and ill-mannerism. They’re entitled to nurse their feeling of hurt. But the young salesman’s cursing of Isa, to his face, was a genuine expression of frustration of millions of Pakistanis—be they at home or abroad. The people of Pakistan have been licking their wounds and nursing their own reservoir of frustration over the brazen theft of their mandate, in favor of incarcerated Imran Khan (IK), earlier this February.

The people of Pakistan have every moral justification to feel frustrated over the axis of evil conjured up between Bonapartes and a shameless CJ of the apex court who’s demeaning the concept of the judiciary being the watchdog of the rule of law. That young salesman, giving expression to his own frustration, was actually speaking on behalf of millions of frustrated Pakistanis, too.

But Faez Isa is too thick-skinned to be swayed by that young man’s insult or by any other. He’s on a mission to beef up his longevity and bolster the chokehold of his mentors in uniform.

As these lines were being written, news has filtered out of Islamabad of Isa resorting to another tack to add grist to the mill of the puppets-in-power deploying every dirty trick to amend the Constitution and mold it in favor of fascist rule by the Bonapartes.

The initial assault at the fortress of the 1973 Constitution, in September, was met with a humiliating setback. The exercise undertaken at the behest of the Bonapartes, and Faez Isa, proved stillborn because the numbers didn’t add up. Those who boasted of wrapping up the whole undertaking in a day couldn’t muster up a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Parliament to realize their plan.

A part of the Machiavellian exercise—of subversion of the Constitution—focused on accommodating Faez Isa’s lust for power in a two-pronged subterfuge: change the age of retirement of apex court’s judges from 65 years to 68—so that Isa could lord over his fief for another three years to the delight of his handlers. If that wasn’t possible, undercut the sway of the apex court as the last resort of interpreting the Constitution by creating a parallel, new, Constitutional Court and equipping it with the power to be the final, and only, authority on all matters constitutional.

In his latest maneuver, or antic, Isa has undertaken an engineering job. He wants to reinterpret Article 63-A of the Constitution to facilitate the puppets-in-power to somehow wangle a two-thirds majority in the Parliament to bring about the changes sought by their mentors-in-uniform. If successful, the amendment would also benefit Isa and keep him in the service of his military masters.

The apex court, under Isa’s predecessor, Justice Ata Bandiyal, had adjudicated that any member of the Parliament voting against the directive of his party leader, would not only lose his seat but his vote against the party line wouldn’t be counted.

Isa’s maneuver seeks to allow a renegade member’s vote—cast against his party’s directive—to be counted as valid, even if he loses his seat.

To put teeth to his brazen undertaking, Isa doesn’t mind ripping apart the court he presides over. He has no compunction in playing the part of a modern Biblical Samson.

He seems to have no pangs of conscience that his shenanigans are stripping the apex court of its moral standing in the eyes of the people of Pakistan. He’s trading insults in public with two senior-most judges of his court: Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, slated to succeed him on October 26 if Isa’s engineering fails, and Justice Munib Akhtar.

To the people of Pakistan, it’s a sickening spectacle to see the venerated judges of the highest court of the land washing its dirty linen in front of their eyes.

To add insult to injury, Isa has hand-picked junior judges, in awe of him, to sit on the bench he has constituted, off his own bat, in place of senior judges not bowing to his, and his minders’, diktat. He has even nominated an acting judge, in brazen disregard of all canons and decorum of justice, to sit on his bench. This carefully-crafted bench is supposed to review Bandiyal Court’s interpretation of Article 63-A.

Isa is tugging at all windmills to facilitate the task of buying off members from PTI to clinch a two-thirds majority in Parliament for numbers needed to realize the Machiavellian plan to subvert the Constitution. He doesn’t mind, at all, what a history of ignominy he creates in the process, or, in the event of failing in his subterfuge, he ends up with a lot of egg on his face.

There’s a well-known proverb in Urdu: زبانِ خلق کو نقارہء خدا سمجھو , which roughly translates as, the voice of the people is a warning from God.

The tongue-lashing of Isa, at the hands of a lowly bakery salesman of Islamabad, last week, should have shamed any man with self-respect. But Isa belongs to that species of man that has no iota of self-respect.

The bottom line is that it’s the curse of the Devil for the people of Pakistan to have a man like Isa—devoid of morality or self-respect—to preside over its justice system. Machiavelli would be immensely proud of Faez Isa! - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)