Justices Mansoor Ali Shah and Athar Minallah handed in their resignations, hours after the contentious 27th Constitutional Amendment was signed into law by President Asif Ali Zardari.
Both judges had called on Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi in separate letters to summon a full court meeting and judicial conference to hold a debate on the 27th Constitutional Amendment.
In his letter to the president , Justice Shah assailed the amendment as “a grave assault on the Constitution of Pakistan”, which “dismantles the Supreme Court of Pakistan, subjugates the judiciary to executive control, and strikes at the very heart of our constitutional democracy”.
“By fracturing the unity of the nation’s apex court, it has crippled judicial independence and integrity, pushing the country back by decades,” he wrote.
“As history bears witness, such a disfigurement of the constitutional order is unsustainable and will, in time, be reversed – but not before leaving deep institutional scars.”
The judge stated that he had a choice between serving as an SC justice, which he said “undermines the very foundation of the institution one has sworn to protect”, or hand in his resignation.
“Staying on would not only amount to silent acquiescence in a constitutional wrong, but would also mean continuing to sit in a court whose constitutional voice has been muted,” Justice Shah wrote.
“Unlike the 26th Amendment — when the Supreme Court of Pakistan still retained the jurisdiction to examine and answer the constitutional questions — the present amendment has stripped this court of that fundamental and critical jurisdiction and authority.
“Serving in such a truncated and diminished court, I cannot protect the Constitution, nor can I even judicially examine the amendment that has disfigured it,” he stated.
On the other hand, Justice Minallah stated in his letter that when he took the oath of office 11 years ago, he swore to uphold not “a constitution” but “the Constitution”.
He wrote: “Prior to the passage of the 27th Amendment, I wrote to the Chief Justice of Pakistan, expressing concern over what its proposed features meant for our constitutional order.
“I need not reproduce the detailed contents of that letter, but suffice it to say that, against a canvas of selective silence and inaction, those fears have now come to be,” he added.
