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citizens seeking redress for a variety of grievances. At one stage the cell was
said to have received 14,757 complaints over a period of three months only.
As the year progressed a state of confrontation between the judiciary and
the executive became evident though both sides often denied this.
Buoyed by an iconoclastic streak in the people’s mindset and the eagerness
of a powerful section of the media to don the mantle of a comrade-in-arms the
judiciary not only passed orders but also made sure they were implemented. It
succeeded in establishing complete control over appointment of judges of
superior courts, over-ruling the parliamentary committee and the president
and ignoring the protests of the bar representatives.
It was also the year when the judiciary tried to establish the majesty of the
law by a generous resort to the law of contempt. One prime minister was
convicted of contempt and forced out of office and another barely escaped
following suit, and quite a few other cases were carried into the new year. In
the process the honourable judges acquired a new and more authoritative
idiom of expression, in the courtroom and at public fora, that their predecessors
had studiously avoided, steeped as they were in traditions of restraint and
under-statement.
No martial law now
The superior judiciary frequently declared that thanks to its state of
alertness the nation had been rid of the spectre of martial law.
While hearing the reference filed by President Zardari for revisiting the
Bhutto case, Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, presiding over an
11-member bench, declared on January 04 that there was no room at all for
military courts in the country because the constitutional court of ultimate
jurisdiction had already shut the door on such courts for ever. The CJ said to
the federation’s counsel, Babar Awan; “This is a loud and clear message to all:
nobody should be under any illusion now: as long as we are sitting (here) and
functioning under the constitution, Inshallah, nothing with happen to the system.
The days are over when people heard that something could happen overnight.”
Addressing the Rawalpindi Bar Association after inaugurating the newly
established judicial complex in Rawalpindi a few days later, the CJ declared
that the SC had shut the door on martial law. Nobody had the courage to
impose martial law in the presence of a free and fair judiciary.
The CJ said the court could have objected to Zardari’s swearing in by
Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar but they did not want anarchy in the country.
Similar statements were issued by other leading judges. For instance, the
Chief Justice of the Peshawar High Court told the media on January 19 that
the SC verdict of July 31, 2011, whereby CJ Iftikhar Chaudhry regained his
office, was a complete code of conduct (for judges) and that doors to dictators
21
State of Human Rights in 2012