Islamabad April 4, 2024: President human rights cell of PPP ex Senator Farhatullah Babar has said that the recent awakening of judiciary has provided a historic opportunity to political parties to take the bull by the horns in securing freedom of politics, parliament, judiciary and media from the invisible forces in a hybrid model of governance.
He said this while speaking at a seminar organized by Shaheed Bhutto Foundation in Islamabad to mark the anniversary of the 1979 execution of the Party’s founder Chairman Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Islamabad today.
The historic March 6 ruling after forty four years of the murder of Shaheed Bhutto and the letter by 6 IHC judges marked not only an attempt to jettison its past but also a course correction by the Judiciary. It is also an opportunity to politicians, the generals , media and the people to correct their course, he said.
“The course correction for the generals is to stop dabbling in politics, for the politicians to stop leaning on generals and to depend on the people and respect their vote. For the media the course correction is to avoid partisanship in political battles and becoming a tool of anyone in the so called 5-G war. For the judges course correction is to interpret the constitution and not rewrite it”
He said that the political situation in the country however is disappointing as the politicians did not appear to be on the course correction path.
From political parties awarding senate tickets to independents wired to mysterious backers, formalizing the hybrid through bodies like SIFC and not investigating the mysterious attempt to amend the IRSA ordinance and thus change the Indus delta landscape it appeared that political parties have yet to undertake any meaningful course correction.
He also called for implementation of the 2019 verdict in the Faizbad dharna case and the 2012 verdict in the Asghar Khan case to hold accountable those who violated their oath. Keeping silent will not help. After the judiciary embarking on course correction we must ensure that those who violated the oath are punished as ordered in the court verdicts. Punished they must be even if the punishment is symbolic in nature, he said
As long as the parliament, political parties, media and judges are amenable to manipulation and as long as the people are not the real sovereigns there will be no real democracy and no real freedom in the country, he said.
Former Governor KPK Barrister Masood Kausar, former secretary Election Commission Kanwar Dilshad, Zafarullah Khan ex Executive director PIPS, Nargis Faiz Malik MPA, Prof Tahir Malik and Asif Khan CE Bhutto Foundation also addressed the seminar.