Politicking: I am here to heal Karachi’s wounds, says JI chief

Legal fraternity advised to continue fight for the rights of the common man.

KARACHI: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) wants to transform Karachi into such a peaceful city that even the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain will be able to visit it without any fear.

JI chief Senator Sirajul Haq offered this satirical challenge to the political party that has held sway in the metropolis for the last three decades, while addressing the Karachi Bar Association at the city courts on Saturday.

"I am not here to conquer the city but to heal its wounds," he said, adding that terrorism had badly tarnished the image of what was once the city of lights. "In the very neighbourhoods of this city, Faisal became 'Faisal Mota' and Ajmal is now identified as 'Ajmal Pahari' because of the prevailing quasi-political order."

Haq, who recently got elected as senator in the upper house of the country's parliament, was invited to speak to the bar by the Islamic Lawyers Movement, his party-backed group in the legal fraternity.



Clad in a white shalwar qameez and a black waistcoat, the JI chief spoke at length about various issues being faced by Pakistan. His speech, though centred on the current judicial system, touched upon political matters such as the upcoming by-elections in the NA-246 constituency. "Is the government so lacking in resources that it could not install the biometric system in a single constituency?" he asked.

Speaking about the Tahir Plaza incident, he said that lawyers could even not get justice for their own fraternity. "How will they then serve the common people?" At least six people, including women and a lawyer, were burnt to death after unknown miscreants set on fire a building housing the legal fraternity's offices in April 2008. The incident remains a mystery as its case still lingers without any proceedings.

The current system, he said, favoured the elite. "If a poor man, like me, has no money to pay, can he knock at the court's door for justice?" he questioned, adding that even the banks gave loans to the rich while the poor suffered because they did not have anything to show as surety.

Haq also praised lawyers for their defiance of the martial laws in the country. He said that bars were the centres of movements against military rulers such as Ayub, Zia and others, whenever they derailed democracy.

"It was a lawyer who raised the slogan of nara-e-mastana against Pervez Musharraf at a time when almost every politician had bowed before the dictator," he said, adding that the slogan had sparked a 'historic' lawyers' movement. The JI chief was of the belief that the country's biggest problem was the monopoly of a specific group over premiership. "The group of feudals and  aristocrats who were fought against under the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah in 1947, still enjoy the same perks."

The voters and the taxpayers have no stake in the current democracy under the status-quo, he said, adding that the country has enemies within its lines. 

Published in The Express Tribune, April 19^th, 2015.