A Sad Day for Pakistan

naeem

This is not doctrine pf necessity. it is the doctrine of ''survival'' of supreme courte.

I am unable to understand the argument here.

Supreme Court can only do what the law allows it to. The law has been established by the 17th Amendment to the constitution.

Ofcourse the judgement was on technical grounds. I think Rana Bhagwandas did everyone proud by being a dissenter to the judgement but that said... the judgement of the larger bench stands 6 to 3.

I don't agree with it but one must respect it or else we would be picking and choosing for ever.

Re: # 2

I totally agree with you. A constitution which can be converted into a 'Fatwah'(an edict) on the faith of the people, which only God knows about, can also declare the man in 'wardi with the gun' to be the only fit person to rule the country, turned virtually into 'Yakistan' now.

Please stop whinning, pakistanis seem to be incapable from understanding that justice isnt only justice when you like the outcome. The courts uphold the LAW. Maybe you need to read the constitution to understand their ruling.

re:Naeem Sadiq

I agree, with cliftonbridge, Mantolives and philosopher.

The real issue here was the supremacy of the law and independence of the judiciary in Pakistan.

The disappointment of the verdict aside, the decision of the court should not be simply taken as an acid test against or for Musharraf. In Pakistan, what we urgently need is the institutionalization of the process and the procedures for debating, and resolving and accepting and ultimately, respecting the final decision. The emphasis in Pakistan, and where Pakistan needs to pay attention is towards the idea of the supremacy of institutionalism and not the supermacy of the individual personalities.

Presently, the decision of the court might be a bitter pill to digest, but there is hope in the disappointment. The Supereme Court's decision, when looked into from the perspective of the nature and role of the court itself, makes sense. It is about the upholding of the idea of seperation of powers in Pakistan even, when in reality the seperation of powers in Pakistani politics is murky.

What the court was saying was that it is not the responsibility or the function of the court and law to legislate the legislative process.

Through this decision, the court has, ironically, reinforced the idea of the seperation of power by suggesting that it cannot make laws; only parliament can make laws. Through this decision, the court has squarely blamed the parliament for passing the Seventeenth Amendment and has also said, that parliament and politicans and not the courts should make the law.

It has, via this decision, maintained the independence of the judiciary as a seperate branch of the government and did not allow the judiciary to slip into deciding legislative issues.

The job of the judiciary is to define, interpret and implement the law of the land and not make the law itself.

This is the far-reaching and the consquential result of the Supreme Court's decision.

One only has to thank the fickle minded and self-serving politicans for making the law that allowed Musharraf the legal legitimacy, which he needed to contest the elections in uniform!

Note: The decision was based on the existence of the law, the Seventeeth Amendment, which incorporated the entire Legal Framework Order into the constitution and in fact, made it de jure.

Who made the law and passed the Seventeenth Amendment?

The Superme Court of Pakistan or the MMA?

Solution to the problem, as the court has said is simple. Parliament can change the law and if the offending amendment is removed, then the illegality of dual offices becomes a matter of the law and can be judged upon.

This is a landmark decision in the history of Pakistan, because it states clearly the importance of following a procedure to change the law - acts of parliament instead of judicial ad hocism, no matter how expedient it may seem in a given moment for a particular reason.

The Doctrine of Necessity has been rejected, because the supremacy of the law and means of the law have been upheld.

Ever since the dismissal of the Chief Justice of Pakistan to his restoration; to Nawaz Sharif returning, all the decisions have been made on the existing codex of laws in Pakistan.

Regardless of the decision, what has triumphed has been the process of the law itself and had the Supereme Court done, what you hoped; the idea and independence of a judiciary in Pakistan would have ended!

Ciao

Feroz,
I posted this on the other board before I read your post here. I guess we have drawn essentially the same conclusions so there is no harm in posting it here also.

The new SC decision is interesting and basically Judges made the point that since the politicians in the assembly approved the current situation via the 17th amendment, now it is politicians’ job to change that decision. This actually is a good thing. Pakistani politicians were looking for the shortcut via the SC and that was an unreasonable expectation. The SC very effectively shot that down.

The struggle between the army and the civilians is direct now. The politicians, the Lawyers and other democratic loving people should now think about a direct confrontation with the army in the streets of Lahore, Pindi and other towns. The SC saga was created to limit the struggle for the democratic rights. However, the new judgment has placed the onus back on the political leaders to mobilize common man to lead this fight instead of a few judges in the Supreme Court. Small numbers of Judges can always be bought and sold but none can by millions of people.

As Najm Sethi today pointed out brining people out on the streets opens some unacceptable possibilities and one of them would be to allow the Islamist goons and Hayvanoons to control the streets and ultimately use that to usurp power. I guess that risk now has to be taken.

It is NOT the SC’s job to establish democracy in Pakistan. It will always be something that people of Pakistan will have to accomplish. Relying on crutches like the SC or the internal difference in the army or even the US pressure would not provide the ultimate relief to people of Pakistan.

Musharaf and the army have been thoroughly discredited in Pakistan and it is a matter time and some more pushes from the people to finally end the ignominy of living under the army rule.

Its the job of politicians to overthrow the martial-law in pakistan....supreme court wont do it cause...they dont have apparatus to take on the Army...only the ppl of pakistan thru some kind of political movement and uprising can take the governance away from the Army...if ppl stand up..army'll stand down...Qazi hussein can say what he likes about apex court but he needs to bring the crowd out of there home...i m saying 30,000 ppl...thats a small number marching towards presidency..will do what he is begging supreme court to do

Jaisa karoge vaisa bharoge!!

It was only a few weeks ago pakistanis were celebrating the dawn of judicial activism, the new mantra that will finally deliver heaven for pakistan, a heaven better than the jihadic heaven. Now all are disappointed, nothing to be disappointed about, the leag structure that accepted repeatedly the doctrine of necessity, was morally bankarupt a long time ago.

A society that has never seen the rule of law, cannot expect the legal system to have some prinicples, how can camphor survive in wild fire.

The latest taw that allows army and other govt officals to simultaneously hold political positions is simply the legalisation of what has been happening in pakistan. Most of teh senior govt positions are held by military, now they will also hold political positions.

At last teh constitution of pakistan asserts

" the army has a country, Pakistan"

It is time for the pakistanis to accept the relality, and serve under the military yoke. There is a choice, teh jihadic yoke.

Jayaprakash Thackerey get a life man. Whatever that Pakistani did to you ... you still have no locus standi in the matter.

jayp aka gao mootarr..abbayy why r u guys fascinated with pakistan..get over ur low self esteem grab a beef biryani..after which u'll have enuff courage to save ur mother..they r burning her alive..run save her.,.just cause the dad died doesnt mean mom has 2 as well u morons

An as expected decision from the the supreme court of a failed state is not a sad day for pakistan. The following news is the first time confirmed crash of a US aircraft inside pakistan. That is a clear sign of sad day for pakistan.

From jang of today

US drone crashes in N Waziristan

By Mushtaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR/MIRANSHAH: A pilotless US spy plane crashed about 15 kilometres inside Pakistan’s border village Land Mohammad Khel in North Waziristan Agency on Friday evening.

Local residents told The News from Miranshah by phone that the CIA-operated drone, was flying over North Waziristan when it fell on the village. Locals rushed to the spot and started collecting equipment of the destroyed plane.

The Predator reportedly came on the ground due to technical fault. Land Mohammad Khel, about 25 kilometres west of Miranshah, where the drone crashed, is the hometown of pro-MMA MNA from North Waziristan Maulana Nek Zaman.

Military spokesman Maj-Gen Waheed Arshad, when contacted, confirmed the crash inside the Pakistani territory and argued it could have most probably lost its direction due to technical problems. “The local administration has been directed to collect information and probe how the US spy plane crashed inside our territory,” explained the spokesman.

Posts 11 and 12,

Instead of calling me names, please do read my post, it is a view different from what you have read on chowk, reflect on it, think and discuss it, and that will improve the self critical faculty of both of you.

The religious beliefs have conditioned you both to obey, follow what is in the book, and my posts provide you some lateral perspectives, definitely you cannot find them in the book.

I can understand your anger at teh blasphemic ideas I am posting, but read them, they are original, they are provocative.

whats provocative is u showing up while soaked in cow-piss...a serious quandary..do u veggies bobble ur head while typing english as well or is it just a conversational malfunction?

Best suggestion I heard today is that the general elections should only be within the army, and all parliamentarians plus the president should be elected from the army regardless of their rank. Just leave the public out of it!

Zeemax,

I totally support that. Finally army would have cpatured the last remaining pak institution, parliment. The courts, well as the judgement of today shows, can only interpret teh laws that army makes. In any case, if the army does not like that interpretation, they can change the laws.

The beauty of teh pak system is that the military is funded by the yanks, and as the talk of benzir return shows, the yanks will decide who the other pak puppet in the government is.