Justice in the
dock
Rashed Rahman
Maryam Nawaz’s
press conference in Lahore on July 6, 2019 has driven a coach and six through
the accountability process. A video was aired at the press conference
purportedly showing Accountability Court Judge Arshad Malik in conversation
with Nasir Butt, a Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) activist currently
based in London. The explosive part of the video, as reported in the media,
shows the judge admitting to Nasir Butt that the corruption and money laundering
charges against Nawaz Sharif could not be proved due to lack of evidence.
Considering that Nawaz Sharif has been sentenced by Judge Arshad Malik to seven
years imprisonment in the Al-Azizia reference and is currently languishing in
jail, the revelation shocked the country and set off a virtual firestorm of
accusation and counter-accusation between the government and the PML-N.
This exchange
ran along by now familiar lines, except for the specifics of the issue under
discussion. Maryam Nawaz naturally saw the visual-audio ‘confession’ by the judge
as vindication of the claim that Nawaz Sharif was innocent and the target of
political victimisation. The PTI government’s point woman and Special Assistant
to the Prime Minister on Information (for all intents and purposes the
Information Minister) Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan declared in two press conferences
on the day and the day after that the government would carry out a forensic
audit of the video, which she declared ‘fake’ in the same breath even before
the forensic audit! Her Information Ministry also induced PEMRA to issue
notices to 21 TV channels for airing the unedited press conference and video.
The next day
after Maryam Nawaz’s explosive revelations, Judge Arshad Malik mounted his own
defence, which ran along the following lines. Nasir Butt is an old
acquaintance/friend of the judge from Rawalpindi. The video is a ‘doctored’
version put together by juxtaposing separate conversations from different
times, and that he had acted fairly and justly by convicting Nawaz Sharif in
one reference and acquitting him in another. So far so good. But then the judge
opened up another controversy by claiming he had been approached by the PML-N
to bribe him and after refusal, threaten him and his family if he found against
Nawaz Sharif. Maryam Aurangzeb, the PML-N spokesperson, immediately pounced on
this statement by raising the perfectly logical question why the judge had not
revealed these approaches before. Why now, when the proverbial cat was out of
the bag? After all, the honourable justice has claimed a very serious breach of
the law, but only after the video revelations and as part of his ‘defence’. Maryam
Nawaz on the other hand interpreted the judge’s ‘defence’ as a tacit admission
of the existence of the video conversation/s. It may be recalled that former judge
of the Islamabad High Court Justice Shauqat Siddiqui had made startling claims
in a speech that he had been subjected to pressure by the intelligence agencies
to give verdicts according to their wish. Justice Siddiqui came out with this
revelation of his own accord and not due to any other exigency. Of course this
led to his removal, but the point remains that any attempt by any quarter to
pervert the true course of justice is not just condemnable, it should in
principle attract the most severe penalties under the law to put a stop to such
manoeuvring. Of course the unanswered question in this regard remains: who will
bell the cat?
There are also
unsubstantiated reports in the media that the judge claimed he was pressurised
if not blackmailed into giving the guilty verdict and prison sentence to Nawaz
Sharif. Now demands are echoing from all sides to get to the bottom of the
matter. While Dr Awan promises a government investigation, under the circumstances
such a government effort may not be credible, since the government is seen as a
‘party’ in the controversy. Similarly, the results of any forensic audit will
only be acceptable if it is clearly independent of the sitting government. On
present trends/statements emanating from the government, this does not appear
likely, thereby arguably opening the gates to more controversies and back and forth
between the government and the PML-N.
The PML-N and
the PPP have requested the Supreme Court and the Chief Justice of Pakistan to
take notice of the issue. Jamaat-i-Islami’s Siraj-ul-Haq has demanded a
judicial commission to look into the matter. So far, there is discreet silence
from the highest judicial institutions.
Surely such a
controversy is deeply damaging to the respect, dignity and integrity of the
judiciary. It only takes one negative instance to erode years of good
jurisprudence carved out by the judiciary. Not that our judiciary, with due
respect, has not had its share of controversy and charges of miscarriage of
justice laid at its door in our history. Precisely for this reason, the
judicial apex institutions need to step in to conduct a fair, above board
inquiry into the Judge Arshad Malik affair. If any of the charges and
counter-charges are proved as a result, the perpetrators, no matter who they
are or on which side of this divide, must receive their comeuppance. Otherwise
the PML-N and the opposition as a whole will feel its claims of political victimisation
in the name of accountability have been borne out in this case, an outcome that
will cast dark clouds of uncertainty and doubt on the whole architecture of
accountability inherited from the Musharraf regime and drag the judiciary as an
institution too into the swamp.
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