ISLAMABAD – Over 300 lawyers from all over the country have written an open letter to the judges of Supreme Court and High Courts urging them to reject any appointments to a newly “proposed court”.
The open letter signed by the prominent lawyers including Munir Ahmed Kakar, Abid Saqi, Riasat Ali Azad, Abid Hassan Minto, Bilal Hassan Minto, and Salahuddin, expressed deep concern over the establishment of the new court. The lawyers wrote in the letter that they, the undersigned, addressed this letter to the judges of Pakistan’s constitutional courts: the High Courts and the Supreme Court. They added that an assault on our constitutional compact is being cloaked in the thin garb of arguments grounded in the supremacy of law.
They stated, “These are arguments that do not withstand the slightest intellectual scrutiny, given any serious consideration. Behind ill-considered references to foreign jurisdictions, and critiques of the judicial system that this amendment cannot actually fix, is a plain proposal. Judges of the High Courts are to be controlled, the Supreme Court is to be amputated, and its severed limb replaced with loyalists handpicked by those who have always wielded power.”
“We refuse to engage, in good faith, with any such ideas because they are not ideas rooted in good faith. In any case, by design, no such chance for meaningful debate has been afforded. We are told to trust these ideas because they take root in the Charter of Democracy. Yet, some of these ideas were put to rest even during some of the darkest periods of dictatorship in Pakistan. We remember that this was only possible through the opposition of the very parties that now propagate them,” maintained the lawyers. The letter read that the oath that you swore as judges of constitutional courts was a promise to protect the Constitution. This proposed amendment emerged from the darkness of the night, from a pen that will not claim it. Those who claim to be our elected representatives tell us that they have the “numbers” to pass the amendment even as they admit that they are unsure of its content.
It said, “We urge you – the judges of our constitutional courts – not to recognise this proposed court if such a bill is passed. We urge those of you who may be hand-picked to serve on it not to do so. Complicity will be no defence of the Constitution: it will be its defacement.”
They continued, “To be clear, we see the proposed court as no different: it will be a PCO Court, and those who take oath to serve on it will be PCO judges. But we also remember how you, yourself, set history right – by overturning that same decision. Indeed, we remember all this no less because your own judgments now retell tales of how our courts failed us.”
They concluded that this moment offers you a choice. The very fact that an attempt is being made to mutilate our courts speaks to the reality that -today- you are not, yet, on the wrong side of history. And so, we urge you: do not yield. When today’s history is recorded in tomorrow’s judgments, let it say that you were not complicit.
