The Karachi Bar Association in a resolution on Thursday recorded its “profound alarm at the constitutional rupture caused by the 27th Constitutional Amendment, which has dismantled the independence of the Supreme Court, distorted the separation of powers, and directly infringed the basic structure of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.”
A resolution signed by KBA President Amir Nawaz Warraich and General Secretary Muhammad Ghulam Rehman Korai acknowledged the “unprecedented and principled resignations of Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Athar Minallah who relinquished the highest judicial office together with all constitutional privileges not for personal gain but to preserve the Constitution, the integrity of their oath, and the independence of the judiciary.”
The resolution read that their resignations were a legal and moral testimony that the constitutional order stood fundamentally impaired.
“As one of the oldest and largest representative bodies of the legal fraternity, and acting under its constitutional responsibility to safeguard Article 175, 175A, 184(3), 199 and the basic structure doctrine, the Karachi Bar Association rejects the Twenty-Seventh Constitutional Amendment in its entirety. The Amendment is inconsistent with the principle of judicial independence mandated under Article 175(3) and violates the constitutional scheme that protects an autonomous Supreme Court,” the KBA said, adding that no bar association could remain silent when judicial authority was curtailed by the executive design.
The KBA expressed its full solidarity with the two judges whose decision, it said, reinforced that the judiciary’s legitimacy flowed from constitutional fidelity, not from acquiescence to unconstitutional acts. The bar association announced the commencement of a peaceful nationwide movement for the Protection of the Constitution, strictly within the rights guaranteed under the articles 16, 17 and 19 of the constitution.
Further, the KBA called upon all the bar associations across Pakistan to observe a nationwide strike today (November 14) and abstain from court work as a collective, principled and constitutional response to the grave institutional injury caused to the Supreme Court. It said the KBA would fully follow and strictly implement this strike at the City Courts, Karachi, and would lead from the front as it had done in every constitutional movement of the past.
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Meanwhile, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Pakistan Emir Hafiz Naeemur Rehman said the 26th and 27th amendments had clearly exposed the forces that held the Constitution and democracy hostage.
Speaking at Meet the Press at the Karachi Press Club on Thursday, he termed 27th constitutional amendment unconstitutional and unIslamic. The ruling parties were afraid and allergic of democracy as neither did they practise democracy within them, nor did they act in a democratic way in their journey to assemblies.
He said that undemocratic designs of ruling parties would empower those who sought to gain even more control and privileges. The JI chief said impunity granted to the field marshal and president under the 27th Amendment was unjustified and against the spirit of Islamic principles.
He said the rightly guided caliphs and companions (RA) of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) all presented themselves for accountability before the public and the courts. He said the influential high-ups should come forward and declare that they rejected the immunity provided under the 27th Amendment.
He said that the parties responsible for distorting the Constitution were dynastic and hereditary, nurtured in the laps of dictators. “Be it Mr. or Maulana — they are all the same,” he remarked.
He criticised the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) for trying to shield a few individuals from judicial accountability, saying that so-called democratic forces were power-hungry. He said it was an irony that the grandson of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was advocating for undemocratic amendments to the 1973 Constitution.
He added that a truly independent judiciary would automatically render all such amendments void. Through the 27th Amendment, the government has gained majority control while the judiciary has been reduced to a minority, enabling the arbitrary transfer of judges. “When all routes of justice are blocked,” he warned, “the people’s hands eventually reach the rulers’ necks.” He said that earlier, pre-poll and post-poll engineering used to be done, but through the Form 47, the record of all rigging had been broken.