One thing I never understood is the obsession of certain quarters and personalities to keep things secret using the lame excuse of oath (yes the same oath for which they have absolute no regard when it comes to being threatened by the naked force of army). Yesterday CJ IMC was concerned about the attorney general of Pakistan not being under oath and he/she can not keep the things secret.

I am just flabbergasted by such a naive observation from the Chief Justice of Pakistan. What sort of things he want to keep secret about the appointment of a judge. The appointment of judges should be absolutely transparent and open , if the judicial commission rejects a name for the appointment then the reasons ought to be public.

There is nothing to be kept secret in appointment of a judge my Lord!. Unless you want to hide the “open secrets”  like how many times a judge took oath on PCO , how many times a judge validated the naked aggression and how many judges have the old friendship with which head of political party. Justice Ramday himself pointed out that there were judges in the past who were accused of murder but were appointed as the judge. Do you want to keep that secret my Lord!

Besides that I don’t understand the point of Chief Justice; why won’t he trust the attorney general of Pakistan who by virtue of his/her duties come across so many national secrets when representing the government in courts. An attorney general is a professional lawyer and most of times perhaps better than many of the judges of Pakistani courts in keeping the national interests above than his own.

Hamid Khan’s argument concluded.

Hamid Khan had nothing more to argue against the Judicial Commission except that he does not like the Attorney General and Law Minister in the judicial commission. As if his liking is more important then the combined will of 400+ representatives of people of Pakistan. The arguments given against the inclusion of Attorney General and Law Minister are as absurd as the CJ’s observation on keeping the secret. In fact even Judge Ramday accepted that Attorney General is a better choice.

Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday wondered what the contribution of a retired judge could be in the appointment of a judge as he would be the member of the judicial commission. “A member of bar can make better contribution in judicial commission rather than a retired judge, even AG is the better choice for the judicial commission,” he remarked.

One thing I noted in Hamid Khan’s argument was the representation of the thinking of self-righteous elite people of Pakistan. His arguments were not against the judicial commission or the procedure of appointment of judges , instead they were more on the lines of  “flawed” composition of judicial commission and his hatred towards the elected representative sitting in the parliament.

150 Years Old Tradition

Justice Ramday as usual have been very vocal during the whole proceeding so far , however most of the times his observations are just funny. Yesterday he talked about 150 years old tradition being done away with. C’mon then in another case you would argue that 60 years old tradition of validating dictator’s martial law should be kept. As rightly pointed out by Justice Saeed Asif Khosa that since the process will now originate from the judiciary itself therefore there is no need of any consultation.

Better things to do

I must say that I consider it waste of my time , but more then that waste of much more precious time of the 17 judges of Supreme Court of Pakistan to hear such a petition. I remember when CJ was restored on 20th July 2007, he started publishing the number of public cases heard every week in the Supreme Court of Pakistan , showing that how aggressively Supreme Court is dealing with backlog of pending cases.

Even Dogar court tried to follow the same tradition. However unfortunately now nobody knows how many cases are being heard every week. The reason is very obvious Supreme Court is busy in hearing the “political” cases not the common people cases. BBC urdu recently published a report that 185,000 cases are pending in the higher judiciary.

For those who may have forgotten the rhetoric of CJ and Justice Javed Iqbal to bring the General Ashfaq Kiyani (the then head of ISI) to the court in “missing people case”, now CJ is quite content with bringing “Rehman Maliks” and “Babar Awans” of this world. My lord lest you forget General Ashfaq Kiyani was the same head of ISI who was present on that fateful day of 9th of March 2007.

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