Stressing the necessity of the constitutional court in the country, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari vowed on Tuesday that his party would ensure its formation come what may. Addressing the Sindh High Court Bar Association on Tuesday, the PPP chief said that 19th constitutional amendment was introduced under duress “following a threat from the Supreme Court”. “The judicial reforms would be undertaken in line with the Charter of Democracy (COD) come what may,” he vowed. The government pushed the proposed constitutional package amid speculation about a potential extension in the tenure of Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa, who is set to retire in October this year, following the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf\u2019s (PTI) request last month for the early issuance of a notification regarding the appointment of the next top judge. Bilawal continued that the parliament had replaced the judges\u2019 appointment procedure with a globally recognised law via 18th amendment. \u201cIn the United States, entire parliament decides on the appointment of judges that is why martial law is never imposed in the US,\u201d he added. Terming the ex-premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto\u2019s death sentence a \u201cjudicial murder\u201d, Bilawal said that it was \u201cnecessary and also our compulsion\u201d to establish a constitutional court so no other prime minister could be executed and justice would be served to the people. He came down hard on military rulers and said that her mother Benazir Bhutto had seen the military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq\u2019s era in which all political workers went through brutal torture. The politico recalled: \u201cShaheed Benazir knew that our system was broken. At that time, [former chief justice] Iftikhar Chaudhry was not a revolutionary but a PCO judge.\u201d \u201c[\u2026] nor there was any \u2018dam wala judge,\u2019\u201d Bilawal said while referring to ex-CJP Mian Saqib Nisar without naming him. He said that a decision was taken to form a constitutional court citing the need of the people to get justice \u201cwhen courts were fixing the prices of pakora and tomatoes at that time\u201d. Despite claims of securing the “magic number” needed to push the bill through, the government failed to table the judiciary-centric amendments \u2014 possibly including the establishment of a separate constitutional court \u2014 in parliament and postponed its move indefinitely. To pass the constitutional amendments, the government is short of 13 votes in the National Assembly (NA) and nine in the Senate. To attain the required parliamentary strength for passing the judicial package, the ruling coalition parties \u2014 the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) \u2014 held a flurry of meetings to woo Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, but to no avail. The ruling coalition is inclined towards the politico-religious party as it remained a close ally of both parties in the previous government led by the Pakistan Democratic Movement. This multi-party party alliance successfully ousted former premier Imran Khan from office via a no-confidence motion in 2022. However, the JUI-F chief, whose party’s lawmakers are now sitting on the opposition benches, had rejected the constitutional package introduced by the incumbent government, alleging that it aimed at protecting the coalition government and would disturb the balance of power among state institutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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