The fall of the House of Justice |
In the spring of 2007, when black coats filled the streets and the lawyers' movement roared across Pakistan's cities, the country witnessed something close to a civic awakening. Ordinary citizens pinned their hopes on a simple ideal that the restoration of the judiciary could restore the rule of law itself. When Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry returned to office after defeating a military dictator, many believed the moment marked a turning point. A judiciary reborn. An institution cleansed by sacrifice. A chapter about to be written in a new ink.
Few Chief Justices in Pakistan's history have held the moral authority he held then. For the first time in decades, the judiciary had public legitimacy, political momentum, and the goodwill of a nation briefly united in a rare kind of optimism. He could have rebuilt the courts into a model institution. He could have redefined judicial restraint, institutional discipline and constitutional fidelity. Instead the opportunity turned to vanity. Power, once earned, became a temptation. Soon it became an addiction.
Chaudhry began to see himself as the saviour of the republic. He took suo motu powers and used them like a sledgehammer, swinging them into every domain of governance. He began fixing prices of sugar and petrol. He interfered in billion rupee government contracts. He rewrote policy from the Bench. The most catastrophic of his interventions came in cases like the privatisation of Pakistan Steel Mills and the blocking of the Reko Diq deal. Both decisions crippled the state financially and scarred........