<\/p>\n
In a sea of state failure, Justice Bandial stood for the right thing, and the difficult thing \u2014 when his moment came, as it does for everyone, he refused to plead necessity.<\/p>\n
In his masterpiece, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire<\/a><\/em>, Gibbon wrote: \u201cThe books of jurisprudence were interesting to few, and entertaining to none: their value was connected with present use, and they sunk forever as soon that use was superseded by \u2026 fashion, superior merit, or public authority.\u201d<\/p>\n So it was that another land, built on its fair share of dead empires, witnessed the same \u2014 when the books of law couldn\u2019t be put to use, it was thought best to cast them aside.<\/p>\n Up against such decline was Pakistan\u2019s 28th chief justice, Umar Ata Bandial, late of the Lahore bar, who oversaw the most difficult time since any judge after Iftikhar Chaudhry.<\/p>\n And while the post-2008 order was already unravelling, few would have predicted what was to come \u2014 the chief justice would be obstructed or opposed by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) \u2014 before it was torpedoed from power \u2014 the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), the establishment, the bureaucracy, the press, and a divided bench.<\/p>\n For the most part though, this was a decent man in an indecent time \u2014 each \u2018good to see you\u2019 was greeted with howls of anger; serving ministers would go purple with incitement; and calls to resign (read: calls by the shadowlands to clear the field) were a constant.<\/p>\n But this was also the wrong kind of recipient \u2014 whereas far lesser acts of contempt had driven Iftikhar to rage and Saqib to attack, the Bandial court stayed silent \u2014 no notices, no sackings, no ritual humiliations of serial offenders. In times of siege, it knew to conserve its energies and eke out wins wherever it could.<\/p>\n All said, he played an impossible hand with skill and patience.<\/p>\n No sooner had CJP Bandial taken oath that the country was in crisis. As the vote of no-confidence against the PTI sarkar<\/em> gained momentum, this writer said that while such a vote was legal, legalese had aided undemocratic intrigues in the past, and that it was best that elected governments serve out their full terms.<\/p>\n \u2018The majority will\u2019<\/h2>\n