ISLAMABAD, Dec 10: Vice Chairman Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) Rasheed A Rizvi on Friday accused the superior judiciary of allowing a "usurper" to violate the Constitution and depriving the electoral college of its right to elect the president of Pakistan.
Speaking at a full court reference on the retirement of Justice Deedar Hussain Shah, Mr Rizvi also opposed the idea of establishment of federal commercial courts and termed it a parallel judiciary that militated against judicial independence.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in his first-ever address to the nation after assuming the office of the premiership, had announced establishment of federal commercial courts in the major cities for settlement of commercial disputes.
"We as the apex representative body of lawyers vehemently oppose the establishment of a parallel judicial system. We strongly believe that such attempt on the part of the government is meant to take away the legal remedies extended to the citizens through Article 199 of the Constitution and to make the superior courts a simple forum of appeal under civil and criminal procedures," he said.
Citing different judgements, Mr Rizvi said it had been held time and again by the Supreme Court that the principle of independence of judiciary demanded that verdicts of inferior courts and tribunals be subject to judicial review by the superior courts and that parallel courts militate against judicial independence.
"Any attempt to deprive the people of Pakistan of the most cherished fundamental right would be vehemently opposed by the PBC and the entire legal fraternity," he warned.
"The human rights situation in Pakistan is much below the mark as we are far behind the other developing nations in the fields of education and health. "Majority of our people are living below the poverty line and there are hundreds of instances when citizens went missing but the state failed to provide any information, either to the courts or to the aggrieved families," he said.
The courts were found helpless even in issuing a direction to the military or para-military forces to at least disclose the whereabouts of a detained person, he said.
"The incident of a lawyer who set himself on fire in the Lahore High Court and another incident in which a poor man attempted suicide in front of the Sindh High Court by hanging President Supreme Court Bar Association Qazi Muhammad Jamil regretted that the demon of corruption that had pervaded both the bar and the bench had polluted the atmosphere of the courts, and judiciary at the lower rung was in a bad shape.
Access to justice is the basic right of every person and such access does not mean multiplicity of courtrooms or increasing the number of judges, but its essence lies in dispensing justice, he said.
