AFTER declaring unequivocally, in the face of increasing criticism, that the A-Levels and O-Levels examinations would be held on time, the federal government has taken yet another U-turn and declared all exams postponed till June 15 and the A-Levels and O-Levels till October. Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood, who has been piloting decisions about school closures and exams, announced at a press conference that the government had decided to postpone the examinations because of the rapid rise of Covid-19 infections. However, till Tuesday, the minister had been insisting that the decision to let the exams take place was the final one. When students and parents across the country protested against the danger this adamancy by the education minister was placing the students in, and when many political leaders also joined the chorus, he dug in his heels even further. This forced tens of thousands of students to sit the examinations on Monday and Tuesday. However, on Tuesday, the minister took a U-turn and cancelled the decision that he had stood by so firmly.
For once, however, this U-turn by the PTI government should be welcomed. The minister was wrong in insisting that exams proceed at a time when the third wave of Covid-19 is wreaking havoc across the country. He has done right by righting his wrong. His decision was needlessly placing students in danger and dramatically increasing the chances of the infection spreading even further at a time when positivity rates are in double figures, hospitals are groaning under the pressure of patients and oxygen supplies are getting dangerously depleted. But while this U-turn by the federal government is a welcome one, it has come at a cost. The students and their parents have had to endure weeks of agonising uncertainty, educational institutions have had to make hurried preparations while facing the danger of the pandemic and the courts have had to entertain multiple petitions on the issue. All this could have been avoided had the federal education minister handled the matter with greater maturity. He should have had a greater level of consultation with all stakeholders and also taken into account how this issue was being handled by other countries. The U-turn will save the students from the danger of the infection but it should not stop Prime Minister Imran Khan from taking his education minister to task for his gross mismanagement of the issue.
Historic turnaround
A MANIFESTLY ill-intentioned legal saga has come to a close in a historic turnaround. In a 6-4 majority decision, the Supreme Court on Monday accepted all the review petitions, except one filed by Justice Qazi Faez Isa himself, against its verdict on June 19, 2020, in the presidential reference against the judge.
Specifically, the petitions concerned the bizarre directions in the earlier judgement — which had otherwise quashed the reference as being “tainted” — ordering the FBR to conduct an inquiry into offshore properties owned by Justice Isa’s wife. Those directions have now been “recalled and set aside”, and all steps taken in response to them declared “illegal and without any legal effect”. For the Supreme Court to review its decisions is rare, and it is rarer still when a 10-member bench had passed the original decision. The significance of this development cannot be overstated. It is far more than a resounding victory for the apex court judge: it is a triumph of the rule of law and constitutionalism when they seemed to be on increasingly shaky ground.
Judicial reviews are usually sedate proceedings where only points of law regarding the original verdict are discussed. In this case however, the bench undertook a broader examination of the case, going back to the impetus behind the presidential reference itself. Over the course of the proceedings, a sharp divide among the superior judiciary became evident, most notably when the judges differed over the amount of time allowed the government lawyer to present his arguments. While dissent among judges helps in shaping the law and adding nuance to judgements, such a division can also suggest deeper tensions at play. Allowing one of their brother judges to be unjustly persecuted would have left the judiciary as a whole vulnerable; that the majority opinion was converted into a minority one indicates that this view — and perhaps conscience — prevailed in the end.
The verdict also serves as an object lesson for those who tried to pervert the law and the concept of accountability to malign and excise from the bench a judge unafraid to call them out for their excesses. One need only glance through the Faizabad sit-in judgement to understand the genesis of the presidential reference. For the government, clearly willing to go any distance required to stay on ‘one page’ — even to the extent of risking a schism within the highest court in the land — the denouement is an unalloyed debacle, leaving behind a stain it will find difficult to wash away. This was not a matter about one individual, but about silencing an institution that performs as a check and balance on the exercise of power. Among the myriad takeaways to be gleaned from the verdict, one of them is this: resistance to coercive tactics is growing, in civil society, media and the legal fraternity. But will anyone take heed?
Jerusalem protests
THE holy city of Jerusalem was shaken by several nights of protests over the last several days as Palestinian citizens faced off against Israeli security forces over access to the Al Aqsa mosque. The situation was exacerbated when a far-right Jewish group staged a provocative march in the disputed city in which extremists chanted “death to Arabs”. While the Israeli administration said it had restricted Palestinians’ access to the mosque due to ‘coronavirus restrictions’, the Arabs felt this was a ruse to prevent them from gathering at Al Aqsa. The barricades blocking access to the mosque have been removed, but not after over 100 Palestinians were wounded in the clashes.
The recent violence illustrates that Jerusalem/Al Quds remains a flashpoint, despite illegal Israeli attempts to annex the holy city, while the threat to peace posed by radical Jewish groups is also very high. The fact is that no Palestinian faction will be willing to give up claims on the holy city, despite intense pressure from powerful foreign actors. A statement from the Palestinian presidency termed East Jerusalem “the eternal capital of Palestine and … a red line”, indicating that any attempts to restrict access to the city will be resisted. Moreover, the vicious attacks of extremist Jewish groups targeting Palestinians need to end immediately. The Israeli state wastes no time in raining down bombs on men, women and children in Gaza if rockets are fired at the Jewish state from the Strip. However, Tel Aviv tends to treat murderous settler groups with kid gloves, even though some harbour a clearly genocidal agenda against Arabs. But expecting Israel to treat Palestinians with dignity and respect and to punish their tormentors is asking too much. After all, Israel itself has been guilty of crimes against humanity targeting Palestinians and its own Arab population, as Human Rights Watch has recently noted. This is something Tel Aviv’s staunch defenders and supporters in the West, as well as those in the Muslim world rushing to establish relations with it, must explain.
