LAHORE: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has issued a list of occasions when the opposition party says the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) committed contempt of court by criticizing various judicial verdicts and has demanded the Supreme Court to take action.

Responding to what PML-N spokesperson Azma Bokhari says through a propaganda campaign continuing for the last three days in the wake of Lahore High Court’s decision allowing opposition leader and cancer survivor Shehbaz Sharif to go abroad for his medical check-up, Federal Law Minister Faroogh Nasim, Special Assistant to PM Shehzad Akbar, and Special Assistant to CM Firdaus Ashiq Awan are in the forefront on assaulting integrity of higher courts’ judges.

She says that no judge, bureaucrat and politician are safe from the verbal assaults of Ms Awan.

Recounting contempt of courts by various PTI leaders, Ms Bokhari says the ruling party declared Peshawar High Court Chief Justice late Justice Seth Waqar as ‘mentally ill’ for giving a verdict against former army dictator Gen Musharraf in a treason case. The other two judges included in the bench seized with the case were also targeted.

She said the LHC bench which allowed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to go abroad for his treatment was ridiculed, while Islamabad High Court was which granted bail to the PML-N supremo on medical grounds was also criticized.

Ms Bokhari recalls that contemptuous statements were issued on the bails of Maryam Nawaz and Hamza Shehbaz, while various leaders of the ruling party, particularly Fawad Chaudhry, Faroogh Nasim, Shehzad Akbar and Ms Awan, repeatedly leveled allegations against Supreme Court judge Justice Qazi Faez Isa. Social media team of the prime minister ran a regular propaganda campaign against Justice Isa.

She says that Prime Minister Imran Khan’s team thrice leveled serious allegations against LHC judge Justice Baqir Najfi as the judges showed restraint in all the cases.

The PML-N spokesperson demands that Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Gulzar Chaudhry should take a suo motu notice of the repeated contempt of court and character assassination of superior court judges by the PTI leader and initiate legal action against them.

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2021