Despite Pakistan’s unexpected and yet clear superiority over India during Operation Sindoor and its riposte through our military’s Operation Bunyan-ul-Marsoos; despite President Trump publicly insulting Narendra Modi; and despite the international perception of Pakistan skyrocketing at India’s expense, it still felt as though there was everything rotten in the state of Denmark, to quote Shakespeare.
The establishment and its pliable political partners have successfully managed to neutralise several “activist judges” of the Supreme Court and the high courts by amending the Constitution. And yet, despite all that, there have been reverberations of discontent in the judiciary, itching to pick a fight or two with the rulers, with the minimum aim of forcing the Field Marshal to switch his foot soldiers.
The above constitutional amendments have barely given the powers-that-be a temporary respite in terms of a sizeable number of Supreme Court judges serving on the constitutional bench to thwart relentless challenges to the new constitutional scheme, under which the composition of the bench is set to change again in a month or two, among other things. The long-term danger to the foundations of the current dispensation remains clear and imminent.
The establishment, initially exuberant and even arrogant right after Sindoor and Marsoos growing complacent in the absence of further conflict with India, has lately been feeling impatient and insecure, especially after pro-Taliban signalling from Imran Khan’s new protégé, Suhail Afridi. The irreverent defiance, although not unexpected, from the new Chief Minister has been quite jarring for even the hardest of hardened soldiers, particularly when Afghanistan also upped the ante after getting a few crumbs from India.
Asma Jahangir–Ahsan Bhoon group has terminally disturbed all predictions and calculations of friend and foe alike
The latter, seemingly resigned to its fate as a lousy fighter, has wisely given up the idea of provoking direct military conflict with Pakistan. Be that as it may, the PTI’s approach to identify with the Taliban and the obscurantist TLP, even if it resulted in uncontrollable and irreversible civil unrest, had started to pay its dividends as the memory of seven Indian Air Force fighter jets being shot down by the PAF slowly began to fade.
As a result, a few recalcitrant judges had also restarted making speeches in bar associations and, upon invitation, at some obscure environmentalist organisations to keep the flame alive. More and more lawyers have been echoing the PTI’s imprisoned leader, almost by default, when it came to protesting against electoral irregularities—despite much of the steam having been taken out by recent visuals of war and the Field Marshal strutting across the globe on a veritable victory lap, twice to Washington alone.
Not to mention Pakistan’s support, particularly sought by President Trump in the Gaza ceasefire, which has seen Pakistan’s international image grow exponentially, to say the least. But rulers cannot survive on past reputations alone. Next time around, they will need the luck of the draw even more than another once-in-a-lifetime resounding victory like Marsoos in May.
One such unexpected victory has just arrived, as the Asma Jahangir–Ahsan Bhoon group has terminally disturbed all predictions and calculations of friend and foe alike. A clean sweep has been swiftly translated into a disciplinarian code of conduct for Supreme Court justices, the imminent trial of at least two judges of the Islamabad High Court for misconduct, and the judges of the constitutional bench heaving a visible sigh of relief in the face of legal onslaught from lawyers in the same forum.
A triumphant Ahsan Bhoon has once again started to sound euphoric about the 27th Constitutional Amendment Bill, which may sound the death knell for judicial activism for some time to come. Coupled with the recent capitulation of the Afghan Taliban, diplomatically couched in a peace agreement, one can begin to say that not everything is rotten in the state of Denmark.