The 2025 amendments cross into full Orwell territory: undefined offences of ‘fake’ or ‘false’ information, and a ban on ‘aspersions’ against the state, are now the new normal.
Jinnah is a problem for today’s Pakistan. He’s too liberal for the right, too nationalist for the left, too civilian for the generals, and too much of a merit hire for the dynasts.
The main focus of the 26th and 27th amendments — for all the wide-ranging havoc they have brought and will bring to the judiciary — leaves 98pc of cases and 98pc of the litigant public untouched.
When Justice Munir denied the existence of the assembly’s sovereignty, he destroyed the country’s existing constitutional basis. Sovereign power in Pakistan would become a prize, to be seized by the strongest.
After this latest verdict, the Constitutional Bench has served that Constitution on a platter to the rejected parties: they can now reshape our legal order all by themselves.
The lesson of Modi’s entire public life has been that playing with fire benefits his politics — from the inferno of Gujarat in 2002 to Muslim massacres in Delhi in 2020.
To be fair to Justice Isa, he showed tremendous courage in checking the powerful — if power can be taken to mean retired judges, dead generals, and Monal Restaurant.
