A day after the Lahore High Court had observed that Parliament and political parties had no mandate to create new provinces, Khurshid Shah hit back saying that judges talking against Parliament would not be spared. It is unjust to try to dispel the reality that in a democracy every institution and organ of the state has to abide by law. Worse still, to utter words to such effect which plainly add up to increasing the friction between the ruling setup and the judiciary must be strongly condemned. If by twisting the definition of Parliament as a lawmaking body, Mr Shah is harbouring the thought that it enjoys unbridled freedom, he is mistaken.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s address to the National Judicial Policymaking Committee on Saturday, contained just the right note of caution to the would-be Bonapartists’ and others of similar ilk, that ridiculing the court orders would be met with zero-tolerance. A mere look at the past five years of the present dispensation tells us that the apex court was confronted on a number of instances mainly because the litigants’ prestige came in between. Egos dictated the course of proceedings, where simply recourse to pragmatism would have guaranteed a win-win situation. One must give a pat on the back of the opposition and indeed the media that stood by the court in its struggle to assert itself.