In America, nightly media trials enter bedrooms flashed by competing cable and news networks long before the judge and jury have arrived at a verdict. Dare one comment on a case being heard in some court back in Pakistan? Only if you want to be slapped by a contempt of court notice
SUPREME Court Justice Antonin Scalia waddles off on a duck hunt at a private game reserve of a top oil executive with guess who? Vice-President Dick Cheney. So what? Aren’t they pals from their hoary past? But here’s the problem: Cheney’s appeal to keep secret his dealings with the energy task force lies pending before the highest court of America.
“That’s a government issue. It’s acceptable practice to socialize with executive branch officials when there are no personal claims against them. That’s all I’m going to say for now. Quack, quack,” said Scalia. With the Veep (actually the American taxpayer) paying for the old boys’ hunt, Scalia — who is also guilty of flying in Cheney’s ‘Airforce Two’ with daughter in tow — was a sitting duck for media flailing after the fact. Editorials got penned on partisan politics, opinions got heard on dishonest judges: “being a jurist, it obliges him to be purer than Caesar’s wife, as the saying goes ... sadly, Justice Scalia appears to have a tin ear on such matters.”
He is loathed by Gore Vidal, the writer with an unforgiving pen: “His (Scalia’s) both name and visage is reminiscent of a Puccini villain.” Vidal, who lived in Italy for decades, is referring to the operas composed by the great Puccini. Instead of excusing himself when the Supreme Court heard the Bush-Gore case because “his son works for the same law firm that represented Bush before the court,” Scalia acted as the front man for candidate Bush to secure the White House for him, says Vidal. By the way, Al and Gore are cousins twice removed or whatever, just to keep the record straight!
The US Constitution is cockeyed and strangely silent on conflict of interest: should a Supreme Court justice lack the moral fibre or humility to do the right thing in a case, there is no provision to overturn his unethical judgment despite federal rules stipulating that a judge should disqualify himself “in any proceeding in which his impartiality might be questioned.” There is no check or balance on the offending judge.
Such a lacuna in the law is driving many a corrupt judge to get away with murder!
Justice Clarence Thomas (the fellow who would regularly grope his assistant, Anita Hill, and yet won a seat in Supreme Court) has a wife who works for the Heritage Foundation, that inner sanctum of neo-conservatives that, Masonic-style, stuff Bush’s ears with secret dimarches. Now here’s the howler: while hubby Thomas was busy validating the dubious 2,000 Florida votes in Bush’s favour, wife Thomas was busy “vetting candidates for office in the Bush administration!”
Unethical, dishonest and disingenuous, these gentlemen of the court may be, but here’s a silver lining: their immorality never goes unnoticed; it is inventoried by the media for the common knowledge of the American public. The open-mouthed Internet with the world wide web bloggers of every political persuasion post unfiltered information 24/7, cyberspaming stories that have to be told.
What media sauciness? Surely it must invite contempt of court? Are you kidding me? This is not Pakistan. This is America, where anything goes. Corruption is media driven and judges are no holy cows, unlike the ones we have back home — unscrupulous they may be and the press may have proof, but it is forbidden to take a stab at them!
Dare one comment on the personal greed of a judge or his errant ways or his nepotism or his cronyism or his political bias? Heaven hath no fury like a judge scorned in Pakistan! Not only the ‘offending’ newspaper or the TV channel or the editor, reporter, writer — but the whole media outfit — is in the dock by His Honour and his august court.
Here in America, nightly media trials enter our bedrooms flashed by competing cable and news networks spilling over one another while massaging their stories oiled with confidential and classified information, long before the judge and jury have arrived at a verdict.
Gagging the media? Heaven’s no! Sundering its salacious stories on crime, gossip, personality attacks that are the bloodline of this billion-dollar industry would collapse in a second, giving birth to PTV-like drones all around America!
Dare one comment on a case being heard in some court back in Pakistan? Only if you want to be slapped by a contempt of court notice!
The judiciary in Pakistan shelters behind the contempt of court clause, emasculating the media.
Justice Nazim Hussain Siddiqui, the latest enabler of justice, recently analyzed his profession’s contribution at the Saarc law assembly of retired and serving jurists, including the maverick — the nation has lost count of how many civil and military rulers he’s kowtowed — Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada.
“The main questions to ponder are whether the benefits of law reach the common man and does the law protect the weak and the vulnerable?” mooted Justice Siddiqui.
“It is to this end that law has to be directed because it is only through law that we can bring about change.” And the arena of change he wants is socio-economic.
“In my humble view, these are the issues that must be addressed without delay.”
Bravo! Encore!
The moral compass of His Lordship points in the right direction. Will he be taking suo-motu notice of blatant human rights violations swarming around him? Of feeble voices drowning in the din of corruption, never to reach his marbled manor of supreme justice on Islamabad’s Constitution Avenue.
“Different forms of government make laws democratical, aristocratical, tyrannical, with a view to their several interests; and these laws which are made by them in their interests, and him who transgresses them, they punish as a breaker of the law and unjust ...”
Sound familiar? Plato penned this wisdom 387 years before the birth of Christ in The Republic “ ... and government must be supposed to have power, the only reasonable conclusion is that everywhere there is one principle of justice, which is the interest of the stronger.”
Up North, in the wilds, now hosting American sleuths of every hue and size, cutting to the chase for Osama Bin Laden, the Frontier Governor, a retired general, is a talking head on ‘Restorative Justice’, solicitously pushing the neo-jirga concept of justice to the world whose salvation in Iftikhar Hussain Shah’s simplistic view lies in its adoption.
Is the Guv pandering to the tribal bigots and the religious semi-illiterates who have already taken the law into their own hands, including the mediaeval ritual of killing their wives and daughters in the name of honour?
“Restorative justice means a process where all the stakeholders affected by a crime have an opportunity to come together to discuss the consequences of the crime and what should be done to correct the wrong.” The murdered women cannot rise from the grave for redress.
Self-appointed spokesman for the silent majority, the FIA (Federal Investigation Authority) Director, Malik Naveed Khan, paints a horrendous picture with the air being rent with voices of victims criminalized by the current legal system, the courts. Such compassion from the lips of the FIA provincial head is awesome.
Well, perhaps, Shahji and Malik Sahib’s jaded jirga idea may find some takers here in America. Old Chief Justice William Rehnquist perhaps needs to invite the buffs to come lecture his corrupt judges. Licit the two may not be in law, never mind that.
Women make equally dishonest judges in America. Justice Marylin Diamond, 63, titled ‘the queen of corruption’, continues to rule in Manhattan’s Supreme Court. She grabbed $1.1 million through a trust that she set up to handle an ailing woman’s legal affairs; she hired an engineer to put her apartment right — that’s okay — except that the same chap then took the stand before her as a witness for a party that won the case, courtesy Diamond. That’s not all; over the years, she sat on judgment on corporate cases in which she and her husband owned stocks.
Can the media in Pakistan frame such exposes? In their dreams, maybe.
In America, nightly media trials enter bedrooms flashed by competing cable and news networks long before the judge and jury have arrived at a verdict. Dare one comment on a case being heard in some court back in Pakistan? Only if you want to be slapped by a contempt of court notice 
