NEW DELHI: In a significant development barely a week before the elections in Pakistan, the Islamabad High Court demanded that the military and its intelligence wing the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) stop meddling with and manipulating the government and the judiciary. This ‘deep state’, also known as the establishment, is said to be interfering in the election process in order to ensure the victory of a pliant Prime Minister.
“It is expected from the top echelon of Pakistan Army that by appreciating the delicacy, sensitivity, and alarming situation, some remedial steps to stop their agencies from interfering in the affairs of other departments and to refrain from assuming roles not assigned by law shall be taken,” Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui said in his order on Wednesday. He ordered the secretaries of the Ministry of Interior and Defence to place the court’s directions before the chief of army staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa and the director-general of the ISI, Lieutenant-General Naveed Mukhtar.
Noting that ‘playing the role of a silent spectator’ went against the oath sworn by all judges under the Constitution, he said if “ If they (judges) fail in this regard and do nothing, the Pakistani nation and history would not remember them as good judges… Otherwise, these practices shall ruffle the people of Pakistan which, by no stretch of the imagination, is good for the prestigious institution of the Pakistan Army as well as Pakistan.”
“The (secret) agencies are of the state of Pakistan, therefore, (they) need to realise that they have to confine themselves within the limits of the organic law — the Constitution —and the parameters of the law of the land and must stop interfering in the affairs of other institutions (such as the) judiciary, executive, media, and other departments … (who) have nothing to do with the defence and or the security of Pakistan,” he maintained.
Justice Siddiqui’s order came following a hearing of an application filed on behalf of a missing person, allegedly abducted by intelligence agencies. The “local police is in league with the mighty agencies who have disrupted the civic fibre of the country by establishing a state [within a] state.“It is a matter of shame that allegedly persons [working for] the ISI are involved in corrupt practices,” he said.
Concerns over ‘a state within state’
Expressing serious concerns over the perception that a state within state existed in the country, IHC’s Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui said that as such, these elements conspired to manipulate the government and the judiciary.