Full circle

I was on vacation in Lahore at my parents’ house. It was 9 March 2007 and on TV a great drama was unfolding. President Pervez Musharraf along with two or three others (all in full army uniform) and perhaps Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz also present in the room had called over the 20^th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to the Army House. The purpose of the meeting was to read a list of charges and ask Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to resign. This show of power was handled with callous over confidence, not dissimilar to the callousness shown by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the airborne firing of General Pervez Musharraf.  They say history repeats itself and this was a moment that sort of confirmed this hypothesis. Well the Chief Justice, just like General Pervez Musharraf defied the order and refused to resign. This was one of the greatest moments in our otherwise rather compliant judicial history. President Musharraf was unprepared for such response and left the room in anger and utter frustration.

The Chief Justice was made non-functional and this started a nation-wide lawyers’ movement that lasted for almost two years. Over period, this movement turned into a mass support movement resulting in a historic long march towards Islamabad. This movement gave lawyers a strength and prominence in Pakistani politics that they had not experienced before. They knew now they had a street power comparable to that of the students and unions the country had experienced in the 60s and 70s. The movement undoubtedly showed them their power but forgot to instill that with great power comes greater responsibility.

During the lawyers’ movement some lawyers rose to prominence because of their leadership, speeches and spearheading that movement. One of the lawyers’ leaders was Mr. Athar Minallah, advocate, who is now the Chief Justice of the Islamabad High Court. On Monday February 8, 2021, lawyers attacked the Islamabad High Court, because their chambers had been demolished by the Capital Development Authority over the weekend. An English daily on 9 February reported, “The violent lawyers laid siege to the courtroom and the chamber of IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah virtually keeping him hostage for about three hours. They barged into the offices of the Secretary of IHC Chief Justice and his auxiliary staff, broke windows and even doors of the chief justice block.”

There are some lawyers, however, who play music to a different bandmaster, were trained differently by the mushrooming below average law schools. Such law schools are spread all around the country due to the short sightedness of our policy makers in the field of education.

This attack on the Chief Justice’s chambers reminded me of Shakespeare’s King Lear in which he talks about the wheel completing the full circle. It is a sad commentary on the noblest of professions and even sadder is that there seems no end to the lawyers’ aggression, mischief and self-righteousness. If there is ever a downfall of their profession it will entirely be of their own making. Benjamin Austin while making Observations on the Pernicious Practice of the Law in 1786 stated “There is a danger of lawyers becoming powerful as a combined body. The people should be guarded against it as it might subvert every principle of law and establish a perfect aristocracy… This order of men should be annihilated.”

I am sure that all lawyers are not like that. Most of the lawyers are like other people concerned about making ends meet. Earning a living and upholding the law. There are some lawyers, however, who play music to a different bandmaster, were trained differently by the mushrooming below average law schools. Such law schools are spread all around the country due to the short sightedness of our policy makers in the field of education. History is again repeating itself in the new education policy where precious money, already at a premium in the country, will be spent on learning Arabic starting from our Capital’s schools. Instead, that money should be spent on learning science and civics. Civics is something that makes citizens responsible, leaders honest, and nations great. Science is something that makes nations progressive, innovative and great. Who knows if we spend that money wisely we may produce another Nobel Laureate in the sciences.

Now a JIT has been formed by Islamabad High Court to probe the February 8 attack on its chief justice block. Already bar councils across the country are demanding release of the lawyers arrested by the police during and after this attack. The lawyers that attacked the doctors and the Punjab Institute of Cardiology, Lahore in December 2019 went free like a bird soon thereafter. And no one cared about the patients dying due to the melee. There have been other incidents in court rooms where instead of great arguments; scuffles have taken place among the lawyers and even the judges of the lesser courts. Female judges of the lower judiciary have been harassed by the lawyers and the provincial High Courts, instead of addressing these cases of harassment chose to look the other way. These incidents are now happening with greater frequency and raising the bar to the higher courts. The courts working with bar councils will have to come to their own rescue instead of ignoring the problem. Now the problem has become so big that action seems the only way out. But with another battle brewing in the Supreme Court and this time among the justices themselves any chance of rooting out this problem of high-handedness seems remote.

Thomas Paine, the great American political activist and revolutionary said, “The times have found us.” Our courts must ensure that times have found us too, respect each other, respect the law, and respect the differences.