Belated regret

Implicating Justice Qazi Faez Isa in a case that stretched all legal imagination was unwise from the word go. Now, per reports, former prime minister Imran Khan has admitted to a group of lawyers that the filing of the presidential reference against Justice Qazi Faez Isa was a mistake. Apparently, the former attorney general had also tried to persuade the former prime minister to desist from pursuing a case that did not have much merit. The case was likely to be thrown out and exactly that is what happened, though after creating a plethora of problems for Justice Isa and his wife. Throughout his tenure as prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan developed a reputation for taking decisions and then going back on them, stating they were a result of people misguiding him or someone else's fault. But we can only wonder how the entire reference could have been a mistake. Did Imran not know the outlines of the case and what it meant? The persecution of Justice Isa was so fierce that even his wife was dragged into the matter. Despite repeated assertions that any assets Sarina Isa owned came from her own considerable wealth, the case was dragged on.

It is unfortunate that this regret has come now, when it is too late to go back on things that have already been done. At this point, stating that the reference was a mistake really makes very little sense. In fact, it makes the PTI government look even more incompetent than before. The case against Justice Isa and his wife made headlines. We assume Imran knew some of the details and why Justice Isa was being targeted. He, however, chose to move ahead anyway. Justice Isa and his wife were fortunately acquitted. But they could well have been convicted. It is important for all political stakeholders – in or out of government – to resist the temptation to counter dissent or disagreement with persecution. Over the past years, hearteningly, attempts to curtail the judiciary’s independence by the executive have been resisted by civil society, the media, and the legal community in the country. In this case, the judiciary has emerged as a sturdier institution, as was evident in the recent verdict on the no-confidence motion. A weak judiciary is not good for any society, and for Pakistan more so where institutional boundaries have suffered from a severe case of encroachment into each other’s domains.