Islamabad : While the dust kicked up by the two Supreme Court judgments in extremely high profile cases of political nature is yet to settle down, another set of equally important petitions of the same type involving political archrivals has landed in the lap of the highest judicial body to adjudge.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan, along with others, is on one side, seeking to strip ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif off the office of the president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, who, heading a bench, had earlier given a clean chit to the PTI chief and disqualified Jehangir Tareen, will preside over another three-judge panel that opens hearing on Monday on the challenge to Nawaz Sharif’s party presidency.
Besides Justice Maqbool Baqar, the bench also includes Justice Ijazul Ahsan, who is the monitoring judge of the proceedings in the accountability court and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) against the deposed premier, his children and Senator Ishaq Dar. He was a member of the five-member panel that had decided the Panama case and was also part of the three-judge implementation bench.
When a controversy had already raged at a sonorous pitch on the July 28 verdict of Justice Asif Saeed Khosa-led bench, disqualifying Nawaz Sharif on “Iqama”, the judgment of the chief justice-chaired panel came clearing Imran Khan and penalising Tareen that intensified political storm, which has no signs of subsiding due to the political nature of the decided pleas.
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is angrily rejecting the Panama verdict and taunting the judgment favouring Imran Khan. On the other hand, the PTI has disapproved the adverse ruling against Tareen but lauded the decision, exonerating Imran Khan.
The intense war of words on the two verdicts is unabated. In this hullaballoo, the judges of these two panels have been implicated in this tug of war. The chief justice has also defended the judgments and trashed haranguing them.
The outcome of the present petitions will not help soothe the prevailing political confrontation on account of the judicial determinations. This is the strong downside of adjudication of cases of political nature.
After failing to block the PML-N and its allies in Parliament in passing section 203 of the Elections Act, 2017, that allowed a disqualified person to be office-bearer of a political party, Imran
Khan has knocked at the
door of the Supreme Court
to get this provision shot down.
It was a rare development in the parliamentary history that a section 203 in this case, was twice passed by the legislature. First it was approved along with the entire Elections Act.
For the second time, it was cleared when the opposition parties’ amendment, calling for its erasure, was rejected by Parliament.
Nawaz Sharif was declared ineligible under Article 62(1)(f) of the Constitution, which reads a person shall not be qualified to be elected or chosen as an MP unless he is sagacious, righteous, non-profligate, honest and “amen”, there being no declaration to the contrary by a court of law.
Its simple reading makes clear that this kind of disqualification only prohibits the person hit by it to get himself elected as a federal or provincial legislator. But the ineligibility doesn’t place any bar on the person so affected to hold an office in a political party.
Importantly, apart from section 203, the PTI chairman also wants through this petition the deletion of another key provision, section 9 of the Elections Act, which strictly forbids curbs on women voters to exercise their right of franchise. This clause is in fact meant to ensure participation of females in the voting process in areas where they are barred for different considerations.
The explanation to this section says if the turnout of women voters is less than 10pc of the total votes polled in a constituency, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) may presume that they have been restrained through an agreement and may declare polling at one or more polling stations or election in the whole constituency, void.
Clause 1 of section 9 says if, from facts apparent on the face of the record and after such enquiry as it may deem necessary, the ECP is satisfied that by reason of grave illegalities or such violations of the Elections Act or the rules as have materially affected the result of the poll at one or more polling stations or in the whole constituency including implementation of an agreement restraining women from casting their votes, it shall make a declaration accordingly and call upon the voters in the concerned polling station or stations
or in the whole constituency as the case may be, to
recast their votes in the
manner provided for by-elections.
Imran Khan has also sought striking down of section 10 of the Elections Act by the Supreme Court, which arms the ECP with contempt powers equal to those of high court. Since he was hard-pressed by the contempt notice issued by the ECP, he wants its powers to be annulled. But this did not
occur to his mind when this clause of the Elections Act was unanimously passed by Parliament.
The section says the ECP may exercise the same power as the high court to punish any person for contempt of court and the Contempt of Court Ordinance, 2003, or any other law pertaining to contempt of court shall have effect accordingly as if reference therein to a court and to a judge were a reference, respectively, to the ECP and the Chief Election Commissioner or, as the case may be, a member of the ECP.
After attacking the ECP for months for issuing him
the contempt notice for haranguing it, Imran Khan
has to finally tender an apology that led to the wrapping up of these proceedings against him.