Judges have every right to be a little irritated when the orders of their courts are ignored be it by individuals or by organs of the state. They are currently irritated by the failure of 'the agencies' to recover a number of missing persons – in other words, the failure to produce the persons believed to be in their custody before the court. A three-member bench of the apex court was hearing petitions of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, and in the course of the proceedings Justice Raja Fayyaz Ahmed said that 'the agencies' had failed to recover the missing persons. Mr Justice Javed Iqbal commented that the intelligence agencies of other countries had to abide by the law of the land and could not function against common law. Even more pointedly he said…"There is no law that permits the abduction of people" and that no agency or institution is exempt from accountability to the law by the constitution. The bench then gave the government two weeks to submit a report to the court – though if the past is anything to go by the honourable justices may be in for a wait longer than a fortnight.
'Threats to democracy', real or imagined, fly thick in the air these days. As observed by Justice Javed Iqbal the case of the missing persons poses a far greater and more tangible threat to democracy than do the ephemeral 'threats' conjured from the ether by politicians discomfited by the judiciary and the media. The restoration of the judiciary was a considerable victory for both popular sentiment and the rule of law, and since the judges' reinstatement we have seen the courts working to right many of the wrongs of the Musharraf era. Those years were a time when 'the agencies' held sway and were allowed to be above the law. If they 'disappeared' a few hundred people here and there, so what? There was nobody to hold them to account or question what they did, and the judiciary then was in the pocket of the government. But times have changed and fresh breezes of accountability are beginning to stir the covers placed over many a dark deed. We the people need to know where those 'missing' are being held, by whom and for what reason. And the judiciary is right to be irritated at the tardiness of 'the agencies' in their compliance with its wishes.
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Tags :Constitutional Law
