The two pillars of the state, Pakistan’s Executive and its Judiciary, continued to battle on Thursday. The government has rejected a panel set up and headed by the chief justice that is due to rule on a draft law clipping his powers.
The government rejected the chief justice’s panel arguing that there was a conflict of interest and he could not oversee it.
This latest standoff comes on the heels of months of economic and political turmoil.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government is involved in a row with the Supreme Court over holding snap polls in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Former PM Imran Khan dissolved their provincial governments this year in a bid to force Islamabad to hold early elections.
The government says it is not economically feasible to hold elections ahead of a general election due in October.
On Wednesday, Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial had set up a panel of eight judges, to be headed by himself. It started discussing the draft law, according to the court’s cause list, on Thursday.
The draft law, which has been passed by parliament and sent to the president for approval, cuts down the chief justice’s powers to form panels, hear appeals or assign cases to judges in his team, according to a copy of the bill.
“We reject this panel,” Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar, flanked by all of the government’s coalition partners, told a news conference in Islamabad. “We expect that this panel will be dissolved today.”
Tarar said there was a clear conflict of interest and called on the chief justice to quit.
A parliamentary finance committee on Thursday rejected a bill to issue 21 billion rupees ($73.87 million) in funds for the snap polls, Sharif’s aide, Ata Tarar, said.
The chief justice summoned government finance officials to his chamber on Friday to seek a reply on the funds, warning that non-compliance would have consequences.
The row between the government and the judiciary comes amid economic turmoil, with record inflation and an acute balance of payments crisis, while talks with the IMF to secure $1.1 billion in funding as part of a $6.5 billion bailout agreed to in 2019 have not yet yielded fruit.
