The orchestra of justice

No one cares about Article 63-A or its interpretation. There, I said it. I promise you, at least 99% of people don’t care what Article 63-A says, means, or how it should be interpreted. People do not care. Do you know what we really care about? A stable job, a stable income, lower exchange rates. We care about receiving quality public transportation, quality infrastructure, affordable housing and streets that don’t look like lakes when it rains.

Do you know what we really care about? Quality state education. We also care about good healthcare, medical insurance, and being able to buy a car if we want to. If the courts can decide cases in 2 days by staying open all day and all night, it can very well decide the cases that have been pending for the last 10 years. It can stay open for those who were wrongfully convicted and have been behind bars. The Supreme Court can and should stay open all night for those who are on death row with appeals pending before the apex court. By deciding cases of the rich and elite in a short span of 2 days, the judicial system is reinforcing the already established notion that justice has a price.

Justice has a price and if you are rich enough to pay that price, you will have your case decided in a matter of days. It chills me to the bone knowing that the wrongfully convicted are behind bars, with the possibility of being executed very soon. Their appeals are pending. No one pays heed to them. Every day they sleep, realising that tomorrow might be their last day. And their cases keep going on and on. No one cares about them because they aren’t in the Parliament or have NAB references. We don’t know their names; they don’t wear expensive suits and they don’t ride in high-end vehicles. They lurk in the shadows and simply turn into a number once they are executed. Who are you even kidding?

When it is a matter of ‘public importance’, you decide cases in days but when it is the public, cases never get disposed of. Is the public not important? The same public that pays your hefty salaries through their tax money? Justice sells. It is all about the big bucks you are willing to spend. I’ve seen mothers bawling their eyes out in courts begging for justice, begging for the speedy disposal of their cases but no one cares because it’s not a matter of public importance. Replace those mothers with bureaucrats and politicians and see how cases are dispensed with. Article 25 of the Constitution of Pakistan says all citizens are equal before law and entitled to protection of the law.

I’d pay a fortune to see the Supreme Court interpret Article 25. To see how they ‘interpret’ that all citizens are equal before the law and deserve equal protection of the law. My question is simple. If the courts can remain open all night and all day for the rich, why can they not do it for the poor? Why do the poor and the middle class not receive as much importance? It has been proven that our judges do have the capacity to expeditiously decide cases. If they can do so, why not do it for everyone? I thought we were all equal before the law?

That we all deserved justice as a right. I’ll reiterate my view. We don’t care what different articles of the Constitution mean and how they should be interpreted. We want cases to be decided and disposed of expeditiously and we want justice to not have a price. We don’t want matters to remain pending for years. We don’t care what the due process is and what formalities are. We want justice and we want it without a price tag attached to it. The biggest crimes are committed by the rich. If they can get justice, so should we.