Among the few “ideologically” driven supporters he can still count in his corner, Qazi Faiz Isa has long been projected as an indefatigable warrior in the cause of rule of law and constitutionalism. And he has not been shy of confessing that half a democracy is better than any dictatorship.
I do not know where Gen Asim Munir and Sikander Sultan Raja stand on this issue, but together with the Qazi they have striven to ensure that Pakistan will get only that half of democracy which it deserves. And that is the Nawaz Sharif and the Zardari half of it. To make this “half” unassailable [while robbing it of the last shred of credibility] they have done their best to rule Imran Khan out of “democracy” and to crush his party.
The methods used to crush this “half”, which constitutes about eighty percent of the population of Pakistan, have been unique in their novelty and unprecedented in their scale of application. The two top tiers of PTI leadership, and more than ten thousand of its supporters, have been thrown in jails and have been languishing there for months. Those not in jail are on the run or in hiding. When arrests don’t work, abduction is resorted to. The ones abducted have their “software updated” by various forms of torture or threats of torture. They gain emancipation through press talks, in which they are expected to revile Imran Khan. Those who refuse to bend become victims of blackmail. Their homes are raided, businesses destroyed, and terror brought upon their wives and kids. Those in jail have multiple cases registered against them. These work like an assembly line. If they get bail in one case, a second one is ready to take its place. Imran Khan stands charged with no less than 200 offences! And all of them are patently false. And when the police runs out of plausible offences, the DCs move in for facilitation with MPOs.
And now when the time has come for candidates to register for elections, an entirely novel plethora of tricks is being resorted to, so that the maximum number of PTI candidates are kept out of the contest. The commonest trick is for strategically posted unidentified persons to appear suddenly and snatch electoral forms from the hands of candidates on their way to submit them, and vanish on motorbikes. If this cannot be done, the proposers and seconders of PTI candidates are abducted. If this fails, the candidate himself is abducted or charged with an offence. And if all this fails, the ROs reject their forms on grounds manufactured then and there.
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Had Qazi Saab known that all this was going on, he would have taken strong action. But the problem is he did not know. He did not know because he does not watch TV. And the only member of the family who does watch it, the graceful Mrs. Sarina Isa, watches only when the Qazi is the star of the show in his own courtroom. And even then, her notice is confined to his postural imperfections, and not to his blithering utterances. This is so cute that many must be wishing that they too had wives like this one!
But last night Qazi surmounted a peak of dishonesty which lesser men do not even try to attempt. He literally brought the house down, when he denied PTI their electoral symbol. For all intents and purposes, this was like ruling the party itself out of the electoral process and ensuring that only those representing the “right half” of democracy would be taking part in the contest. And just a week earlier, he had set aside the lifetime disqualification of Nawaz Sharif from electoral politics towards a related end.
A lot of people are pulling their hair out on account of these two “historic” Isa judgments. They are raving mad, but they do not know that Qazi is least bothered with history. However, he may have a partiality to geography and economics. There is a probability that with these two judgments, his property and the balance in his bank will show a marked increase, as happened after his ruling in the Hudaibiya case.
It is not for nothing that he was so shy about giving the money trail in his own case, stating, in his own favour but under his breath, that though the common man needed to justify his wealth against his resources, a judge was exempt from this legal obligation!
Justice Munir merely surrendered in the face of a fait accompli. But the Qazi became a lowly tout in the conspiracy to usher in a fait accompli, which has devastated the people of Pakistan. And that is how he will be remembered.
In the old days eunuchs at the court wielded great influence and power. They were often king- makers. It seems that after eunuchs went out of fashion, pimps moved in to take their place as king-makers. And who will pimps favour, but whores!