Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, the man who would have been Chief Justice of Pakistan had it not been for the rushed 26th Constitutional Amendment, has issued a parting shot at his predecessor, Qazi Faez Isa.
The latest in the war-by-letter between the two judges has Justice Shah calling Isa “vindictive” and without “humility.” He writes that “in good conscience” he could not attend the traditional farewell for the outgoing justice, as it would have signaled that any Chief Justice can “betray his institution, erode its strength, act petty and low” and still be celebrated.
Instead of Justice Shah, a special parliamentary committee chose the third senior-most judge, Yahya Afridi, as Isa’s successor. Justices Shah and Afridi once ran a law firm together and are considered old friends, but the bonhomie didn’t extend to supporting each other through thick-and-thin, as Shah opted to skip the oath-taking ceremony of his ‘brother’ judge. Key to the superseding of Justice Shah by lawmakers—four of the PMLN, three of the PPP, and 1 of the MQM—was his seeming bent toward Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). This was, per most government lawmakers, evident in the judgment he authored in the reserved seats judgment, which has been criticized for granting relief to a party, i.e. the PTI, who wasn’t even a petitioner in the case.
Justice Afridi, on the other hand, allows his rulings to do the talking and is considered “unapproachable” and free of any obvious bias. He was likely also helped by his dissenting note in the same reserved seats judgment, spelling out the “dangerous” precedent being set by invoking the doctrine of “complete justice” that the majority judges relied on to facilitate the PTI.
The vicious back and forth between Isa and Justice Shah gave the nation a popcorn spectacle. Both wrote multiple letters to each other—all of which became public—despite having plentiful opportunities to resolve their differences privately. They also took to sniping at each other in their judgments, with Shah taking special umbrage at Isa’s dissenting note in the reserved seats case, wherein he pointed out “constitutional violations and illegalities” in the verdict that made its implementation “not binding.”
The result of both sides’ vitriol is a public who sees widening rifts and further loses its faith in the Pakistani judiciary’s ability to deliver justice. This was reflected in the 2024 Rule of Law Index, which ranked Pakistan 140 out of 142 countries, only exceeding Nigeria and Mali as the worst offender.