IN the novel Oliver Twist (1838) by Charles Dickens, when one bullied husband, named Mr Bumble, is told by the court that the law presupposes his wife acts under his direction, the husband utters a phrase originally written about 200 years earlier by George Chapman in a play which goes: “If the law supposes that, the law is an ass, an idiot”. The phrase represents a rigid, narrow appli- cation of the letter of the law while entirely missing the spirit and its essence.

The phrase came to mind in the wake of the pedantic judgment delivered on Jan 13 by a Supreme Court (SC) bench that was headed by the honourable chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) and which upheld the decision of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to deprive the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) of its symbol of the cricket bat because the party, allegedly or actually, failed to fulfil procedural requirements related to intraparty polls.

The PTI certainly appears to have been extremely slipshod and negligent, but is the larger context not a far more relevant and fair basis to judge its right to use its original election symbol after conditions since May 9, 2023, in particular prevented it from functioning as a normal political party and holding internal polls in an orderly manner?

The founder-leader of the party is in prison since August 2023. There are 200-odd cases pending against him, and new ones are being periodically added. Many of its top leaders were coerced to either resign or switch sides. Several of their family members have been harassed, humiliated by men in police uniform and ‘plainclothes’. Scores of its members have been arrested. Potential candidates have been prevented from filing nomination papers. Supporters, including women, have been arrested, bailed out, re-arrested, and shunted from one province to another. Permission to hold meetings has been denied; even internet-based meetings were disrupted by engineered breakdowns. Is the SC unaware of what the entire nation is witnessing?

And what about the farcical intraparty polls of other parties where the same family oligarchies are re-elected unopposed? And, to top it all, on the very day that the SC and ECP found intraparty polls’ mis-steps to be enough reason to deprive PTI of its election symbol, the ECP permitted Awami National Party (ANP) to use its original poll symbol despite the party’s failure to hold its own internal polls, and permitted it to hold such polls three months after the general elections.

The prolonged full-day SC proceedings of Jan 13 appeared to be a mere smoke- screen. For the record, one should refer to the letter ‘Withdraw the reference’ (June 14, 2019) in which this writer condemned the then PTI government’s move to send a presidential reference against Justice Qazi Faez Isa, and demanded that the reference be withdrawn. It should be clear that the current lines have not been penned out of any personal bias.

Earlier, the chief justice had also asserted that the PTI would have to ‘prove’ that the establishment (aka intelligence agencies) is exerting covert pressures on the caretaker governments and the judiciary. Is that demand meant to be taken seriously?

Meanwhile, the historic victim of forced labour, the ass (aka the donkey), who toils so devoutly for human beings, and who rarely brays in protest, deserves to be de-coupled from idiocy.

The animal surely knows the difference between judgements and justice.

Senator (retd) Javed Jabbar
Karachi

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2024