NRO was a stillborn a Child who dies in the womb

Barrister Amjad Malik, Chair of the Association of Pakistani Lawyers has welcomed the detailed judgement on NRO and whilst commenting Supreme Court judgement on NRO has said that detailed judgement has addressed if there were any doubts remaining and now someone needs to tell the President that ‘time is up’, and nation of 170 million does not afford a single person based constitutional amendment to save him from facing trials or being answerable for the stashed money.

Chief Justice has addressed immunity at Para 149 of the judgement where he said that public office holders cannot hide behind the garb of 'good faith' to hide their corruption and corrupt practices, and who are ‘public office holders’ he explained are all those elected or otherwise on official position including president, PM, Governor, Members of parliament and Nazims etc and he did not even once acknowledged or mentioned Art.248 ‘immunity’ whilst ordering Pak claim on Swiss money, reviving absconder convictions under 31A and Article 63 disqualification(s) of a member of Parliament. 

To me, with the order of reopening Swiss cases citing Marcus and Abacha examples, and reviving 31A convictions under NAB law considering it interference in judicial authority and looking at the whole it seems ‘immunity’ to any public office holder is gone, and cases are opened forthwith. Request for ‘mutual legal assistance’ may not be ordered unless one is ready that sitting President who may enjoy the benefit of the ‘immunity’ (Art.248) may loose that shelter, and not referring it at all means that SC was mindful of the fact and was of the view that he would be disqualified to be on that status (Art.63) had there not been a NRO and SC wishes everybody to be at a place where they were before the NRO was promulgated and issued on 5 Oct 2007.

Now Art. 248 will be read with NRO specially Para 149, where CJ said, “The legislature while enacting a law has to adopt certain measures before extending immunity to the functionaries of the State but at least we can say that an accused or convict cannot enjoy protection for offences, noted hereinabove, or for his deeds, in the garb of good faith” and para 171 where the court said, “NRO, 2007 as a whole, particularly its Sections 2, 6 and 7, is declared void ab initio being ultra vires and violative of Articles 4, 8, 12, 13, 25, 62(f), 63(1)(h), 63(1)(p), 89, 175, 227 of the Constitution, therefore, it shall be deemed non est from the day of its promulgation i.e. 5th October 2007.”  and specific orders in line with article 63 of the constitution 1973 unless otherwise stated and in any first case tried if he does not resign by then, the President may seek to rely ‘immunity clause’ but it is unlikely that he will benefit looking at SC's view whilst relying on Art 2A and Islamic citations  (Art.227). So a new interpretation to Art.248 may be forthcoming whereby it will be decided whether President may claim immunity for the acts done in the past and may face for crimes which he may have committed before coming to that elected position.

However, Lord Justice Jawad S Khawaja talked about a possibility of a far more greater reconciliation and a better law which the parliament can still make which is not in conflict with the provisions of constitution and is not discriminatory and person specific, I think he had in his mind a picture of ‘truth and reconciliation commission’ of South Africa, but not a selective pardon from criminality. 

SC was jointly of the view that Pakistani NRO was the only example in the world where corruption was pardoned and it promoted corruption rather than curbing it and interfered with judicial authority through ‘review boards’ and with NRO ‘absconders’ wanted criminals by law became qualified overnight to get elected as the member(s) of the Parliament which was not at all the desire of the people and collective wisdom of its representative (Parliament) so thus far it was declared null and void ab initio like a still born child who dies in the womb of mother.