WHEN a CEO declares that the business he heads is running perfectly, it’s time for shareholders to get nervous.

So how should we react when Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali declares that our “time-tested judicial system has no defects”? Is this the same judiciary that, time and again, has given legal cover to ambitious generals, and permitted the repeated removal of elected governments?

And is it the same judicial system that has some 1.7 million cases pending? Out of these, the Supreme Court has still to clear a backlog of over 20,000 (as of 2013). And yet, our apex court continues to focus on high-profile cases like directing the government to switch to Urdu immediately. Or trying to regulate the price of sugar, to disastrous effect.

CJ Jamali was in Karachi recently when he made this claim. In this newspaper’s report on the two public events he addressed, he was quoted making other statements as well that caused my eyebrows to rise.

For instance, he declared: “Pakistan, with so many natural resources, can be a prosperous country, but our belief is weak. This weak belief is taking us towards darkness.” Really? I thought it was our extremist views that were dragging us down, together with illiteracy, malnutrition, and an unchecked population explosion.

People can spend years in jail without their cases being heard.

However, I have no doubt that many people, especially those in the Council of Islamic Ideology, will agree with him when he said: “We are living in a society where people have no fear of God and the court’s orders are not complied with.”

While I suppose there is little the chief justice can do about the first part of his complaint, he does have ample powers to address the second issue. Contempt of court is a serious charge, and is frequently invoked by our judges, thereby minimising public criticism.

While defending the judiciary’s record, he mentioned the fact that cases remained pending because of lack of evidence and poor preparation by the prosecution. This is certainly a weak link in our legal system. But a key reason why witnesses are reluctant to come forward, even in cases where the fear associated with terrorism is not a factor, is the endless delays built into the process.

Court registrars fix the same date for dozens of cases to be heard by the same judge on a single date. Since it is not humanly possible to adjudicate so many cases in one day, witnesses and lawyers sit around, twiddling their thumbs. Years can pass before a case is decided, and meanwhile, those involved are called repeatedly without being called to record their evidence.

Many judges appear oblivious to the inconvenience they cause on every one of their working days. Lawyers are routinely given extensions on the most frivolous grounds, putting others to unnecessary expense and hassles. One would have thought that a ‘time-tested’ judicial system that has ‘no defects’ would have addressed this issue by now and reduced the mountain of pending cases.

Small wonder, then, that witnesses are reluctant to appear: once their names are on the roster, they can count on endless wasted days in court. And yet in 2001, the Asian Development Bank approved three loans totalling $350 million for an Access to Justice Project with the avowed intention to “reduce poverty and promote good governance through improvements in the rule of law”.

In its completion report of 2009, the ADP deemed the outcome of the project ‘satisfactory’. Apparently, the number of cases pending before the Supreme Court had been cut from 80,000 to 20,000 over the last decade as a result of the project. This is clearly a big improvement, but even 20,000 is too high a figure.

Part of the project were study tours to foreign countries by judges and registrars. I’m sure they put this exposure to good use. One thing they did not learn, however, was how to conduct hearings on successive days to conclude cases within a reasonable time frame. Normally, lawyers and their clients are informed of the dates well before, and no excuses for delays are accepted.

Presently, people accused of crimes can spend years in jail without their cases being heard as they are too poor to afford a lawyer. Civil cases involving property often take more than one generation to be resolved. One reason the people of Swat initially welcomed Taliban rule was that the militants promised swift justice to those sick and tired of the glacier-like speed of our legal system.

Perhaps I’m being unfair singling out the judiciary: after all, it is one of many institutions in decline. There was a time when judges refused invitations to social functions to avoid taking a favour. Now, some cling to official bulletproof cars after retirement, and set up political parties.

So clearly, there is room for improvement in the judiciary, whatever the chief justice thinks.

irfan.husain@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2016