It seems that the Supreme Court, under its declared 2018 agenda, has undertaken the sanctimonious task of focusing on human rights issues, education and healthcare, using the mighty yet selectively swung sword of sou motos. Where the suo moto prowess is far reaching and covers a myriad of issues that grant morality points to the judiciary’s escalating foray into the realm of the executive, perhaps the CJP should redirect the same discerning fervour to the subversions in his own institution.
Where the apex court feels no qualms about overstepping the boundaries in snatching the wheel from the incumbent government under the guise of steering the country straight, it has failed to curb discrepancies prevalent in its own institution as evinced in the harrowing case of Tayyaba. Where the highly publicized case deserved similar avid attention of the apex court granted to political matters, the case reached a disheartening ruling with the suspension of the one-year jail sentences handed to a judge and his wife for abusing a minor.
A perverse and discriminatory decision that was tilted in the favour of the accused, it is an instance justice is being delayed and denied. As demonstrated by the case, the system also nurtures corrupted lawyers who use coercive methods of intimidation and cronyism, not too different from the politicians the court seeks to reprimand in their selective crusade for justice. The imposed political remediation also means that cases that the court should be focusing on are being relegated to the back burner, where the backlog is piling up and justice is being deferred. Its is unfortunate that the CJP and the judiciary has set out to remediate the discrepancies that the government had disregarded, leaving its own institution to suffer under similar neglect and subversion.