The extent to which the 27th Amendment affected life was to be estimated by how the National Assembly had to pass amendments to the three armed forces acts, and how two judges of the Supreme Court resigned, while two judges of the Islamabad High Court indicated their intention to resign soon. The Supreme Court judges wrote detailed letters to the President, saying that the could no longer serve. Mr Justice Mansoor Ali Shah said in his resignation that justice had become more distant; Mr Justice Athat Miinallah said that the Constitution he had sworn to defend was no longer. The Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mr Justice Yahya Afridi, has summoned a meeting of the full court, which had been requested earlier by Mr Justice Shah and Mr Justice Minallah, as well as by Mr Justice Salahuddin Panhwar. However, that meeting did not take up the 27th Amendment when it was held on Friday, but merely approved the new Supreme Court Rules as recommended by the Rules Committee.
Meanwhile, Mr Justice Aminuddin Khan took oath as the first Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court, and then administered oath to the six new judges of the FCC. Three of them come from the Supreme Court, one is the Chief Justice of the Balochistan High Court, and one is a former Chief Judge of the Supreme Appellate Court of Gilgit-Baltistan and former caretaker CM of KP.T here will be a period of transition, as the courts divide up the pending cases between them. That will not take that long, because most of the work has taken place Though the initial protests promised by the opposition Tehrik Tahaffuz Ayeen Pakistan have not materialized, the government probably does not realize how much it has unleashed.
There are parallels with the 2007 Lawyers’ Movement, and the government should not be taking the matter too casually. It has created confusion among the legal fraternity, and it is its duty to ensure that calm is restored. This is best down by the new FCC publicly setting itself goals so as to achieve the purpose given out for its being set up, reducing pendency, and achieving them. There is a very real danger of its becoming merely another layer through a case must seep before achieving finality. If that happens, pendency will remain the same, or even increase.
