Justice for Justice Isa?

THE judicial history of our blighted land is replete with verdicts in favour of usurpers and against elected civilian leaders, including several prime ministers and have seen their execution or removal from office, imprisonment and/or disbarment from holding public office as a consequence.

There are far fewer examples of the judiciary being weaponised to act against one of its own. You will have to delve deep into the past to find any.

Possibly, the one high-profile recent exception was that of Islamabad High Court`s Justice Aziz Siddiqui who was sacked in October 2018, three months after going public with allegations of ISI interference in court cases, bench tampering.

Against this backdrop, the just-concluded case based on Justice Qazi Faez Isa`s petition before a 10-member Supreme Court bench, challenging as mala fide a reference filed against him by the president before the Supreme Judicial Council, has split opinionsin the legalfraternity.

A handful of senior lawyers have expressed satisfaction that the verdict quashing the reference against Justice Isa vindicates the judge and the referral of the matter to the Federal Board of Revenue will further cement this as the judge`s spouse has demonstrated in court that the family has nothing to answer for.

They argue that despite the Supreme Court directive to the FBR to move at a quick pace to conclude the matter in 60 days, as was demanded by the former law minister Farogh Naseem who led the government team opposing Justice Isa`s petition in court, not much should be read into this order.

On the other hand, many eminent lawyers have raised concerns that the short order has enough alarming elements; those may mean that the judge and his family continue to face pressure via various government forums and also a vilification campaign on social media that has continued unabated ever since the reference was filed.

And finally, they fear, Justice Isa may even face a fresh reference before the Supreme Judicial Council as even a Rs100 discrepancy found by the government-run FBR can trigger a misconduct charge against the honourable judge, even though it has now been established the properties in ques-tion do not belong to him.

Of course, as a layman I can`t really decide which of these two arguments carries more weight and which side`s view will reflect in the emerging scenario over the next eight to 10 weeks. Lawyers have referred to points one and 9 and 10 of the short orderto support...