O What a goodly outside falsehood hath!

I was reading a news piece other day about Justice (retired) Safdar Shah's daughter's letter to daughter of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (ZAB). ZAB forced Justice Safdar Shah to leave his office. Events took a nasty turn on ZAB and ZAB's case appeared before supreme court bench that also included Justice Safdar Shah. Like a professional and honest man Justice Safdar Shah refused to buckle down under pressure from military dictator Zia-UL-Haq and pleaded ZAB not guilty. After that he was dismissed from supreme court and forced to live in exile.

In her letter daughter of Justice Safdar Shah, Ghazala tired to refresh in BB's memory the plight of her beloved father at the hands of enslaved judiciary and asked her to put her political weight behind lawyers movement for the restoration of judiciary in Pakistan. It was no doubt a moving letter but I believe it is a futile effort to rekindle any such memory in the heart of political BB.
To fight for independent judiciary in only important to those people who have no other choice but to live in Pakistan. Politicians like BB come to visit Pakistan to rule over hapless and hopeless Pakistanis. It does not matter to them whether judiciary is free or not because they know that no matter what they do they can very easily leave with their ill gotten assets to places in Dubai, London or USA.

Free judiciary is for people like you and I. People like Atzaz Ahsan, Ali Mohammad Kurd, Munir Malik and all other lawyers, journalists and members of civil society who made a conscious decision to spend rest of their lives in Pakistan. Therefore we need institutions to safe guard our rights. We need a place where we believe that our pleas will be heard. Where you have to pay for your deeds no matter how much strong you are. And we were beginning to witness this happening under the leadership of Chief Justice Iftikhar Choudary and all those honourable judges who refused to take oath under PCO.

Reading her articles in various well known newspapers, listening her delivering speeches on democracy and human rights and then analysing her politics one can not but conclude that they are poles apart. What she writes or says and what she does do not make any good sense. She appears well before her audience and strikes the right chords and reminds me of The Merchant of Venice of Shakespeare:

The devil can site scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O What a goodly outside falsehood hath!
(1.3.95-9)

During her self imposed exile BB was most worried about her cases in Switzerland and Spain. Why? Because she knew that courts in Switzerland and Spain are free and she can not do any thing to stop legal proceedings unless Pakistan government stop pursuing these cases against her. She showed her anger towards Pakistani judiciary when supreme court issued a stay order on NRO. Therefore expecting her to demand for an independent judiciary is like a suicide for her. She is only here to rule and once her prime ministership would be in any sorts of doubt she will taking any next available flight to Dubai, London or Washington.