IN today`s toxic political environment, words must be weighed exceptionally carefully lest they are perceived as deliberately provocative even if uttered in passing. On Friday in the Senate, lawmakers from different parties decried remarks made by Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial the day before during a hearing of former prime minister Imran Khan`s petition against changes to the NAB law. The country`s top judge was reported as saying on the occasion that parliament was being kept `systematically incomplete` and that elections were the `real answer` to the country`s issues. Apparently alluding to former premier Mohammed Khan Junejo, whose government was dismissed by Gen Ziaul Haq in the 1980s, the chief justice also said that the country`s most honest PM had been sent packing by invoking a now repealed article of the Constitution. On Friday, several senators voiced their objections to the comments as being `political` and `against parliament and the legislative process`.

The strongest criticism came from PML-N`s Irfanul Haq Siddiqui who asked: `Who gave him [CJP] the privilege to declare prime ministers from Liaquat Ali Khan to Imran Khan as dishonest?` Further, he saw the CJP`s `disturbing` remarks as an attack on the prestige and sovereignty of the House which, unlike the judiciary or the armed forces, comprises the representatives of the people.

Even for a periodically unstable country, this has been a particularly extended stretch of political tumult --and there is still no end in sight. Instead of parliament being the forum to debate issues and thrash out differences, the `action` has moved to the superior courts a shift in which the PTI has belligerently led the way, though other parties have followed suit. Excessive judicialisation of politics, as is presently the case, blurs institutional boundaries. That, in turn, stunts the democratic process. The superior judiciary`s history is troubling on this count: consider how many times it has legitimised military coups and the overthrow of elected governments, not to mention sent an elected PM to the gallows. It is true that in a transitional democracy, institutional boundaries are perpetually under pressure from one quarter or another; but it is up to each institution to fight for its space. Instead, today`s civilian leadership is willfully allowing its domain to be breached.

Meanwhile, although we have been spared the performative excesses of the likes of retired justices Iftikhar Chaudhry and Saqib Nisar, the well-publicised rifts within the superior judiciary in recent years have not redounded to its credit either. Most damaging perhaps is that the factors that gave rise to these differences convey an impression of a not entirely impartial and apolitical arbiter. That is all the more reason for even casual observations made from the bench to be anodyne and non-committal.