JI chief demands government to accept supremacy of judiciary

LAHORE: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) ameer Senator Sirajul Haq demanded the government openly accept the supremacy of judiciary and prove it through its conduct. 

Addressing newsmen from Karachi at Mansoora on Tuesday, he said the government’s bid to weaken the apex court, keep it under pressure and hurling threats to the judiciary, was simply intolerable. He wondered what message the rulers wanted to convey to society. Sirajul Haq said countries could not be run without accepting the rule of the law and the Constitution. He said if individuals thought themselves above the law and institutions, the entire system of justice would collapse. He said although the government claimed to have trust in the institutions, its actions were contradictory. 

JI ameer said so far, the government was busy handling the cases against the ousted the prime minister and his defence and was least interested in the affairs of the state. He said it had become the habit of the rulers to pressurise the superior courts and to ridicule the decisions of the learned judges of the superior courts. He said lowering the image of the judiciary and hurling threats to its members would only destroy any society.

He warned that unless and until the supremacy of the law and the Constitution was accepted and the institutions were allowed to function with full autonomy and independently, the current situation of uncertainty would not end. 

The JI ameer pointed out that the report of the government committee tasked to trace the people responsible for the removal of legislators’ oath in Khatme Nabuwwat was not out so far and nobody had been punished for that. He said the nation was keenly waiting the exposure of the elements involved in the conspiracy. 

Meanwhile, JI secretary-general Liaqat Baloch in a statement said the fact that as many as 261 members of the parliament had not submitted the details of their assets due to which their memberships had been suspended was the height of the irresponsible behaviour of the legislators. 

Commenting on Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s statement about the differences of opinion between the working relationship between the civil and the military, Liaqat Baloch said the matter was not that simple.