IN addition to the colossal undertaking of dam building and population control the honourable CJP has done immense services to the nation by trying to bring affordable, high quality and efficient, private general and medical education and healthcare along with, duly earth rent paid, bottled ‘ground water,’ to the masses. Criticising medical facilities while speaking at a Rawalpindi Cardiology Institute Workshop he rightly lamented that access to healthcare in Pakistan was only for the rich.

Yet, the one sector he has not managed to humanize — let alone bring under similar parametric controls — is his own constituency of lawyers. Barring a few notable exceptions this sector, is without a doubt the biggest and near consistent violator of that very law.

Underscoring the point in a hard-hitting statement, former CJP Justice Jawwad Khawaja said Pakistan “had about 2,400 judges, and if 100 judgments are examined, one could see that justice was neither cheap nor prompt. A case settlement took 25 years on average, and some 50 or 60 years.” That screams volumes about the quality of many judgements.

Echoing this and the suffering publics’ thoughts JI’s Liaqat Baloch rightly said that the biggest challenge before the Chief Justice of Pakistan was to reform the judicial system and ensure prompt and inexpensive justice to the general public.

In a few weeks the honourable CJP will revert to ordinary mortal, albeit perhaps more equal than some. May I, on behalf of this already highly grateful nation, request him, as his last hurrah, to do unto his brethren what he has so successfully started in the other nation-developing sectors.

Dr Mervyn Hosein

Karachi

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2018