Has Pakistan’s top court cleared former PM Sharif’s way back to power?

The country’s Supreme Court on Monday effectively allowed Sharif to contest the February elections.

Islamabad, Pakistan — Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif appears poised to compete in the country’s February 8 legislative elections that could see him return to power, after the nation’s Supreme Court reversed its six-year-old verdict disqualifying politicians found to not be “honest and righteous”.

But while some analysts said that the top court’s Monday verdict helps balance the power scales between the political class and Pakistan’s dominant military establishment, others questioned its timing.

The majority 6-1 decision by a bench led by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa overturned the Supreme Court’s own earlier judgment banning people from political participation for life if they are found guilty of a constitutional provision that demands that lawmakers have an upright moral character.  The earlier judgment, the court said this week, “abridges the fundamental right of citizens to contest elections and vote for a candidate of their choice”.

Raza Ahmad Rumi, a political analyst, journalist and author, said that the verdict was “not only a reversal of miscarriage of justice, but more importantly, it is a clear acknowledgement of the mistake that was made in the past under the pressure of the then-military establishment leadership.”

Rumi, who is also the director at the Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) at Ithaca College in the United States, added that the decision should not be only seen in the context of Sharif getting relief.