Mr Prime Minister, now I am really confused

Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry has announced that the PTI government is launching a separate judicial system for overseas Pakistanis, which will allow for speedy trials for their legal disputes. Usually, Chaudhry is witty and funny but this one felt like a slap.

One of the major reasons behind the ascendance of PTI to power was its promise to dismantle parallel justice systems, containing separate justice systems for the rich and poor. Instead of abolishing that, now there are proud announcements of going a step further and doing exactly that except this time around there is a proud label attached to this immoral and abhorrent mindset. Imran Khan promised the resurrection of a Pakistan where talent and merit would rule, where talented young people wouldn’t have to worry about rubbing shoulders with the right people in order to land a decent job, where foreigners would come to find work, and so forth.

When former US President Donald Trump announced his Muslim ban, Imran Khan lauded the decision of the American president. Khan at the time said, “I want to tell all Pakistanis today, I pray that Trump bans Pakistani visas so that we can focus on fixing our country.” In the same vein, he said, “The day we bring the merit system back to Pakistan, all our best citizens will return and work for the betterment of this country.” Citizens will now return to drive-thru court trials, not jobs.

During Khan’s election campaign, his rhetoric was, as mentioned above, for overseas Pakistanis to come back and use their talent and training in serving the homeland. However, announcing that there would be a separate judicial system to give speedy justice to overseas Pakistanis because “they can’t stay here [Pakistan] for long” runs counter to Khan’s prayer for Trump to ban Pakistanis from going to America. Does Khan want to help the Pakistani economy by keeping the overseas overseas so that the remittances remain unabated or by bringing the overseas Pakistanis back home so that their talents and training could be exploited for the homeland? Which is it?

Alas, we don’t have Aamir Khan as PK here to read Khan’s mind but if I had to guess then I’d say that he doesn’t mind giving them fast food style slick and discriminatory judiciary system, just so that they don’t stay here for long. This would confirm two things primarily: One, those who remained in their homeland for whatever reason are losers because justice for them would have to experience time dilation. Two, it confirms what PK character in that Indian movie says, that the earthlings’ words and actions are almost never in sync.

Fawad’s obnoxious announcement, which is touted as work of greatness, sounds therapeutic when it is put into perspective a little further; the young men and women in Pakistan who decided to serve their nation in whatever capacity and decided against going abroad would have to go through a slower and an almost completely rotten justice system to get justice. Those who decided to take the oath of another flag would get a business class berth toward their journey to get justice in Pakistan.

I am an overseas Pakistani and I would not want to get speedy justice while the countless poor, orphans, widows, jobless, weak and illiterate don’t even know that justice delayed is justice denied. And the saddest part is that they don’t know that they don’t know. The country cannot establish a just society based on the model of the state of Madina if the resourceful rich from overseas have access to a DHL-overnight model of justice, if you will, while the single citizenship holder local poor is killed without remorse. These words ring a bell about someone I used to know before he became the PM. Pakistan couldn’t do justice to equality, try introducing equality in justice Mr Prime Minister.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 17^th, 2022.

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