After the passage of 27th Constitutional Amendment, Senior puisne judge Mansoor Ali Shah and Supreme Court (SC) Justice Athar Minallah have tendered their resignations.In his resignation letter to the President Asif Ali Zardari, Justice Mansoor termed the newly enacted 27th Constitutional Amendment a serious attack on the Constitution of Pakistan. In his letter, Justice Mansoor Ali Shah assailed the amendment as \u201ca grave assault on the Constitution of Pakistan\u201d, which \u201cdismantles the Supreme Court of Pakistan, subjugates the judiciary to executive control, and strikes at the very heart of our constitutional democracy\u201d. \u201cBy fracturing the unity of the nation\u2019s apex court, it has crippled judicial independence and integrity, pushing the country back by decades,\u201d he wrote. \u201cAs history bears witness, such a disfigurement of the constitutional order is unsustainable and will, in time, be reversed – but not before leaving deep institutional scars.\u201d The judge stated that he had a choice between serving as an SC justice, which he said \u201cundermines the very foundation of the institution one has sworn to protect\u201d, or hand in his resignation.\u00a0\u201cStaying on would not only amount to silent acquiescence in a constitutional wrong, but would also mean continuing to sit in a court whose constitutional voice has been muted,\u201d Justice Shah wrote. \u201cUnlike the 26th Amendment \u2014 when the Supreme Court of Pakistan still retained the jurisdiction to examine and answer the constitutional questions \u2014 the present amendment has stripped this court of that fundamental and critical jurisdiction and authority. \u201cServing in such a truncated and diminished court, I cannot protect the Constitution, nor can I even judicially examine the amendment that has disfigured it,\u201d he stated. On the other hand, Justice Minallah stated in his letter that when he took the oath of office 11 years ago, he swore to uphold not \u201ca constitution\u201d but \u201cthe Constitution\u201d. He wrote: \u201cPrior to the passage of the 27th Amendment, I wrote to the Chief Justice of Pakistan, expressing concern over what its proposed features meant for our constitutional order. \u201cI need not reproduce the detailed contents of that letter, but suffice it to say that, against a canvas of selective silence and inaction, those fears have now come to be,\u201d he added. Justice Athar Minallah regretted that the Constitution he swore to uphold was \u201cno more\u201d, adding that he \u201ccan think of no greater assault on its memory than to pretend that, as new foundations are now laid, they rest upon anything other than its grave\u201d. \u201cWhat is left of it is a mere shadow; one that breathes neither its spirit, nor speaks the words of the people to whom it belongs,\u201d the judge wrote.\u00a0\u201cThese robes we wear are more than mere ornaments. They are to serve as a reminder of that most noble trust bestowed upon those fortunate enough to don them,\u201d the letter read. \u201cInstead, throughout our history, they have too often stood as symbols of betrayal through silence and complicity alike.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After the passage of 27th Constitutional Amendment, Senior puisne judge Mansoor Ali Shah and Supreme Court (SC) Justice Athar Minallah have tendered their resignations.In his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-news-updates"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}