Federal Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan said that if the Supreme Court could not express surprise at the latest bill defining new review procedures just because it had not paid attention to its passing.
Speaking on on Aaj News show Faisla Aap Ka with Asma Shirazi, Dastgir said that even President Arif Alvi had not exercised his traditional onstructionism’ on the bill regarding reviews in the Supreme Court.
“The court has to see how it is standing while we (parliament) exercise legislative privilege,” Dastgir said. He added that way out the current impasse was a full court bench only, in the interest of transparency.
Analyst Muneeb Farooq said that the events of the recent days had given certain people ‘relity checks’. However, the new developments were not likely to emerge and instead old chapters were being closed.
He added that, as per his understanding, the latest law regarding review of Supreme Court decisions would not apply to Nawaz Sharif and Jahangir Tareen’s cases as the option of review in both cases has already been exhausted.
Muneeb also said that there were differences even inside the court itself on how long a person’s disqualification sentences ought to be. He added that the Supreme Court has tradtionally taken a ‘narrow view’ in review petitions as it considers matters of facts and law.
Analst Ather Kazmi said that, atleast on paper, the law’s spirit makes sense. He added that it was a fact for all to see that justice is not being dispensed in the country’s courts, so it was wise to that an extra layer of protection had been added.
However, he also said that the government had already opted for a path of confrontation with the judiciary by bringing a crowd of protestors in front of the Supreme Court in violation of section 144. He agreed with Dastgir and said that transparency is the only answer.
Dastgir added that there was still time to solve the election delay case with consensue by relying on the ‘collective wisdom’ of the court through a full-court bench.
Khurram Dastgir said that the ‘honour’ of the women in custody for involvement in the incidents of May 9 was safe and protected with the police.
He said that Imran Khan’s claims of violence against women were part of a propaganda campaign. He also added that it was in Khan’s political rallies that women had been attacked and it was in Khan;s tenure that women journalists had been harassed online. He also said that Imran Khan had provided a strange answer to a question on a rape incident by saying that ‘men are not robots’.
Muneeb Farooq said that the treatment of women was a sensitive matter and he hoped that nothing bad would have happened. However, in response to a question regarding Khadija Shah, he said that some people made the mistake of thinking that personalities were above the institutions.
Ather Kazmi added that if Imran Khan had no proof to back up his claims about the mistreatment of women then Rana Sanaullah had no proof either because he had not revelead the purported audio containing the plan of a ‘staged rape’.
He also questioned why Khawaja Asif had offered to apologise to Usman Dar if no women had been attacked. He added that the videos from May 9 had shown that women protestors had been met with police brutality in many places.
However, Muneeb replied that while women were always worthy of being treated with respect, throughout the world police dealt with protestors, especially during baton charges, without gender based discrimination.
