‘Institutional reaction’ from SC urged: Attempt to remove CJ
By Nasir Iqbal
ISLAMABAD, June 14: The counsel for Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to frustrate attempts to remove the chief justice from his post through an “institutional reaction”, like the armed forces did in 1999 when the Nawaz Sharif government tried to remove the chief of army staff.
“There should be a similar institutional reaction from here,” Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan said, adding that he would like to quote from President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s book, In the Line of Fire, where he stated how the institution reacted when the government of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif tried to replace the army chief.
“But the reaction by this institution should be legal,” observed Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday who heads a 13-member larger bench seized with a challenge by the chief justice against the presidential reference, composition of the Supreme Judicial Council and its competence to look into the chief justice’s conduct.
Barrister Ahsan cited the example of King Charles I, who was publicly tried and executed after he had sent his forces to arrest six knights in 1627 and was embarrassed by his failure to arrest for treason some members of the House of Commons because, as the king entered parliament without permission, the speaker of the house hid the members in the basement. “This is how institutions react,” he remarked.
Justice Mohammad Nawaz Abbasi recalled that a number of judges had been appointed and removed in the past without consultation with the chief justice.
But the judiciary stopped this practice in the Al-Jihad Trust case by asking the executive not to transgress upon the sphere of the judiciary, Barrister Ahsan said.
What happened on March 9 when the CJ was suspended through a presidential reference was illegal and could not happen even to an ordinary citizen, he maintained.
Instead of trying the chief justice, Barrister Ahsan argued, the purpose of the reference was to malign the CJ because 25 paragraphs in the reference were about the appointment of his son Dr Arsalan Iftikhar only.
Referring to receipts about the purchase of petrol for the official vehicle of the chief justice, he said had the CJ been in the money-making business, he could have earned billions in the Pakistan Steel Mills case.
Justice M. Javed Buttar, however, said no financial allegations had been levelled against the chief justice in the reference.
Barrister Ahsan said the president should not have discussed the reference during his meeting with the CJ on March 9, although he could have sought his resignation and forwarded the reference.
But no opinion was formed either by the president or the prime minister as manifested in the reference, he said, adding that whatever happened to the CJ was illegal and unconstitutional and affidavits filed by the chief of staff of the president and chiefs of two intelligence agencies were “economical with the truth”.Prescribed procedures had not been adopted in removing the CJ which was evident from facts and circumstances and appeared to have been done at an amazing speed on Friday afternoon which, otherwise, was not possible.
No reference against the CJ had been filed from 2pm to 5pm on March 9, the counsel emphasised and said prescribed rules of procedures had not been followed in issuing a notification by the law ministry to suspend the chief justice, appoint the acting chief justice and summon a meeting of the Supreme Judicial Council. Two members of the SJC had been especially brought from Lahore and Karachi to attend the oath-taking ceremony of the ACJ.
“Is it not interference and intrusion on the part of the executive to demolish the edifice of the judiciary?” Barrister Ahsan asked.
He accused the prime minister of representing the will of the ‘commanders’, instead of the will of the people. He recalled that former prime minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali had to resign just two days after taking the vote of confidence following the adoption of the budget. “When I asked the prime minister that he should not resign, Mir Jamali assured that no force on earth could ask him to resign,” he said. But even then he had to resign, Barrister Ahsan said.
