APROPOS the editorial ‘Regrettable verdict’ (Feb 23). While suggesting “the judicialisation of politics should be resisted by the judiciary itself,” one has to realise that the judiciary was unnecessarily dragged into this issue. In the first place there were numerous occasions and chances available to politicians to get the Panama issue resolved in either parliamentary committee hearings or by convening all parties’ conferences.

In the Panama papers case where the prime minister was a defendant should not have come to a pass where the Supreme Court was dragged into it. All other levels of the governing structure should have been exhausted and investigation should have been completed by federal investigation agencies. Only after their completion should the Supreme Court have been approached for final arbitration.

It should have been state law enforcement versus the prime minister and other co-accused and not the opposition political parties versus the prime minister. The matter related directly to the integrity and accountability of people who held high offices of the country.

It appears that Pakistan is the only country where a Panama leak/money laundering/tax evasion matter was investigated at the highest level of the justice system. In the Supreme Court’s own words, it is the ‘court of last resort’. The question is: were all other levels already exhausted by the concerned?

It seems all other institutions which have mandate to investigate issues related to unlawful actions were rendered useless.

The Supreme Court had to do the investigative work by asking the counsel concerned to produce proofs and provide supportive arguments etc. for which they had to constitute a joint investigation team.

If all institutions were working normally, the investigation of Panama papers case would have been an effortless process and the first family and all other people whose names appeared would have been investigated and the case closed by now.

Anas A Khan

Canada

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Apropos the Feb 23 editorial. Unscrupulous demagogues hankering after the prime minister’s office and imitating the dynamic Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ’s style, should learn a bit from his fate.

Here are some quotes from a prime-minister-to-be (present day spokesman for the establishment) from his autobiography: “Cash is essential for political candidates in Pakistan, who can spend a minimum of 10 million rupees in rural constituencies. No politician in the country’s history up till then had ever beaten the establishment.” (Imran Khan, Pakistan: A personal history, p.225).

Referring to another quote: The ISI’s Major-General Zamir “gave me the ISI’s assessment of how many seats each party could get in the autumn elections... Sadly this has been a legacy of intelligence agencies in Pakistan, who without a proper broad-based analysis, have made decisions which have proved disastrous for our country. This was my first experience of dealing with the ISI”, (ibid. 222-223). `Consequently a lot of potentially good candidates abandoned us. The ones that were left were turned on by the ISI; its agents either threatened the Tehrik-i-Insaf candidates or cajoled or lured them into Musharraf’s PML (Q)... Some candidates gave up altogether, telling me they could not fight the ISI.”

All one can say is the Supreme Court judgments need to promote the rule of law and constitutional democracy, not add to the national confusion.

Fabius Canctus

Islamabad

Published in Dawn, February 27th, 2018