Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has recently announced that his government will withdraw a case against a Supreme Court judge, as disagreements among the superior judiciary’s judges grew over the problem of taking cognizance of political cases.
Justice Qazi Faez Isa, the senior-most judge after the Chief Justice, has faced challenges since the Imran Khan government filed a case, known as a reference, against him in May 2019 for allegedly failing to disclose assets held by his family in London.
The PM tweeted that he had instructed Law Minister Azam Nazir Tarar to withdraw the curative review reference filed against Justice Qazi Isa, citing the previous government’s action as “flimsy” and “baseless.”
“On my direction, the government has decided to withdraw the Curative Review Petition filed against the Supreme Court’s senior-most judge, Justice Qazi Faez Isa. The Curative Review was based on ill-will and was intended to harass and intimidate the Honorable Judge at the behest of Imran (Khan) Niazi,” he stated in a tweet.
He stated that the cabinet had already made a choice last year. Separately, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) claimed in a statement that PM Sharif declared in the name of the reference that Justice Isa and his family were “harassed and defamed. “This was not a reference, but a vendetta by a vindictive person, Imran Khan Niazi, against a fair-minded judge who followed the path of the Constitution and the law,” the statement quoted him as saying.
He insisted that the reference was part of a nefarious plot to divide the independence of the judiciary, recalling that the PML-N and other allied parties had condemned the move even when they were in opposition. According to the statement, “Imran Niazi misused the constitutional office of the president for this criminal act, and President Arif Alvi became an instrument in the attack on the judiciary and an accomplice to a lie.”
The reference was filed after Justice Isa issued a harsh judgement against the army in a case involving an extremist religious party, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, sieging Islamabad.
The legal community took to the streets in protest if the judge was deposed, and a 10-member top court bench threw out the reference on June 19, 2020. Seven of the ten judges on the bench, however, directed the Inland Revenue Department and the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to seek explanations from the judge’s wife and children regarding the nature and source of financing for three properties in their names in the United Kingdom.
Later that year, in 2021, Justice Isa won a case that overturned the Supreme Court’s aforementioned order, rendering the entire FBR exercise null and void.
However, the PTI government subsequently instituted a curative review, which is still before the Supreme Court. Justice Isa is set to take over as Chief Justice in September of this year. He hit headlines on Wednesday when he ruled, along with Justice Aminuddin Khan, that the chief justice lacked the authority to form special benches or select their members.
In addition, the two judges stated that hearings based on suo motu notices and cases of constitutional importance under Article 184(3) should be postponed until they are legislated upon. The decision came as the government introduced legislation to limit the chief justice’s authority.
Following the ruling, a member of the five-member bench hearing a case against election delays in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa recused himself on Thursday, forcing the Chief Justice, who is heading the bench, to adjourn the hearing till Friday.
