Pakistan: Verdict lacuna to be exposed after appeal

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Aitzaz Ahsan, who is defending Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in the contempt of court case, has said that there was a “legal lacuna” in the judgment given by the court which would be mentioned after filing of appeal. Talking to reporters at the Parliament House on Friday, Aitzaz said the National Assembly speaker would decide on the issue of the PM’s disqualification. Aitzaz also strongly objected to the use of poetry by Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa in his additional note and lamented that he should not have done it. He said Khosa should not have added poetry in the judgment, especially of his own. He said that it was being misinterpreted in several ways such as “pity the nation which has judges like this, pity the nation where judges do this, do that”, adding that only Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was the outcome of the lawyers’ movement but other judges had vulnerabilities. Referring to Justice Khosa’s note, Aitzaz said, “It says, ‘pity the nation which treats a convict as a hero’, but our nation considers a lot of convicts, if not all, as heroes.” Justice Khosa, in his additional note along with the main 77-page detailed verdict of the Supreme Court, had quoted For Whom the Bell Tolls by John Donne and Pity the Nation by Khalil Gibran.