But lets see the other side of the picture. Nawaz Sharif established, Anti Terrorism Courts, for speedy trials which gave birth to another notion ‘Justice hurried is justice burried’. As a matter of fact, most of the verdicts in Anti Terrorism Courts were annuled or sent back for retrial by the higher courts.

In either case our judicial system is on square one. The system needs structural changes as well as political commitment i.e independence and supremacy of judiciary supported with required infrastructure.

Still even that is not the whole story: contrary to what people assume it’s not a simple case of administrative efficiency.

To understand why i say that; one only has to look at India, with its judicial system which is equally overloaded, in fact the average case backlog in India exceeds Pakistan (7 years on average in India)..yet the India judicial system isn’t as discredited as the Pakistani one.

The reality is the real reason is moral and institutional failure and not administratove (not that i discount the need for quick justice).

If i were to fight a case (for a good or bad reason) in Pakistan both myself and my opponent would have to make two presumptions to be even marginally successful. One is whoever is in an advantageous position will stall the case date, hoping to turn de facto positions into de jure ones by simply waiting the other person out..secondly if the case is won or lost, you go for an appeal ..the reason being if the first judge is impervious to your offers or inducements the second one may not..now this goes against basic conventions that judges only in exceptional circumstances overrule another judge.

Again this does not apply in Pakistans case, simply because the judicial system has no credibility..it has routinely flip flopped on verdicts of major constitutional importance and rarely challenges the government except when it knows it can get away with it ..this perception has filtered down to the grass roots and is a consequence of a long history of nazaria zaroorat or nazaria pakistaniat decisions being the excuse for morally indefensible verdicts.

This stems from the obsession with false legitimacy that Pakistans military and often civilian have..its ok to commit treason or high crimes but its wrong when its called that..