ISLAMABAD, May 27: The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that acceptance of petitions against the 17th constitutional amendment and the dual office of President Pervez Musharraf would have resulted in total anarchy, with the government ceasing to function.

The president, the prime minister, governors, chief ministers, parliament, provincial assemblies, three services chiefs and judges of the superior judiciary appointed by the president, all would have ceased to function and total anarchy would have prevailed, the Supreme Court observed while justifying its rejection of a total of six petitions challenging the 17th Constitutional amendment and the dual office of President Pervez Musharraf.

Authored by Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Nazim Hussain Siddiqui himself, a sixty-page order released here on Friday said that striking down the amendment would result in the collapse of the entire constitutional edifice; the constitutional government would be undone and a vacuum would be created, which was not the function of the judiciary.

“In short, accepting these petitions would invite chaos and create a constitutional crisis.

“This court must allow the government to function and the institutions to gain strength and mature with time,” he observed.

He said any alternate route would only lead to political thicket — a course which this court had always avoided since the decision in the Ziaur Rehman case.

Citing the Syed Zafar Ali Shah case, in which the apex court had validated the October 12, 1999, military takeover, the chief justice observed that prior to that case there was almost three decades of settled law, that no constitutional amendment was ever struck down by the superior judiciary. Remedy lay only in political and not judicial process and appeal in such cases always made to people and not to courts.

A constitutional amendment posed a political question which could be resolved only through normal mechanism of parliamentary democracy and free elections.