Hamid Mir Column Today – Justice Munir or Qazi Faez Isa?

By: Hamid Mir

Don’t you regret that you continued to support Justice Qazi Faez Isa who is being compared with Justice Mohammad Muneer today?

This question was asked to me by a friend whom I had offended a few years ago because of Justice Qazi Faez Isa.

This friend of mine was very close to former Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa. In a meeting, General Bajwa described Justice Qazi Faez Isa as a very biased and dishonest judge.

I defended Qazi Faez Isa and said that if he was thinking of any action against Faez Isa, he was wrong. The Army Chief asked if I knew Justice Qazi Faez Isa personally. I told that I never met Qazi Faez Isa. Hearing that, General Bajwa said that I would know very soon what kind of person Qazi Faez Isa was.

After the controversial decisions of Qazi Faez Isa, the same friend was now asking me whether I regret supporting Justice Qazi Faez or not.

Hearing the question, I remained silent for a few moments. One should not be shy in admitting a mistake. I said to my friend that I do regret.

I thought that the judgment which Justice Qazi Faez Isa wrote in the Faizabad Dharna case was absolutely right because I myself have always criticized the interference of secret agencies in politics.

The Faizabad dharna case decision was actually a continuation of the Supreme Court decision in the Asghar Khan case. So I was not supporting a judge, but a position that caused me a lot of pain personally.

My first regular meeting with Justice Qazi Faez Isa was during the Asma Jahangir Conference in Lahore. When I condemned the reference against him in my speech, he was sitting in the audience listening to me.

Later he gave me a copy of his article in English which was read at the conference on the subject of freedom of expression.

Until he became Chief Justice, I was under the misconception that he believed in the supremacy of the Constitution and the law.

On April 13, 2023, I wrote in the column on the danger of “collapse of the constitution” that Justice Qazi Faez Isa will not allow the collapse of the constitution because the collapse of the constitution can cause us a greater tragedy than the collapse of Dhaka. Unfortunately, my opinion turned out to be completely wrong.

After becoming the Chief Justice, Qazi Faez Isa personally violated his decision in the Faizabad Dharna case and became a facilitator of the interference of secret agencies in politics.

He used to run away in bad times and reach Lahore to participate in the Asma Jahangir Conference. After becoming Chief Justice, he refused to attend the conference, saying that judges do not make speeches but write judgments.

Qazi Faiz Esa remained Chief Justice for 13 months but during this short period of time he kept fighting with his fellow judges and fellow judges with him.

During his tenure, the same thing happened to the judges of the High Courts that General Faiz Hameed did to Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui during the tenure of Imran Khan.

After becoming the Chief Justice, Justice Qazi Faiz Isa provided protection to the most controversial Election Commission which conducted the most controversial election in the history of Pakistan.

He belonged to Balochistan, but the number of youths who have gone missing from Balochistan in the last 13 months is unprecedented. During the tenure of Justice Qazi Faiz Isa, human rights violations and covert censorship increased.

Qazi Sahib not only remained silent on these issues, but he made such baseless accusations against journalists for which he had no evidence.

His real role came out in the Mubarak Sani case in which he was forced to change his decision and because of this case Maulana Fazlur Rehman did not allow the Constitution Court to be formed so that Qazi Sahib did not become the Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court.

Faez Esa has done Punjab a favor with his role as Chief Justice. Now no one will say that Punjab produced Justice Munir, the founder of the theory of necessity. Now many non-Punjabi lawyers are saying that Balochistan produced a worse judge than Justice Munir.