A judicial manifesto
The writer is a professor at Russian School of Economics (NES) and research affiliate at the Harvard Law School. He tweets @mrsultan713
A specter is haunting Pakistan, the specter of democracy — of fundamental rights, equality before the law, and the emergence of democratic and judicial order.
Unaccountable forces ruling Pakistan, beware! The forces of arrests and rearrests, of silencing journalists, lawyers and politicians, beware! The demand for justice and equality before the law echoes through the land, simmering, growing louder and louder!
The history of Pakistan is the history of struggle between democratic and un-democratic forces. Have the travails of the Fatima Jinnahs, the Asma Jehangirs, the Habib Jalibs, the subverters, these traitors ever been easy? Were they not accused of rebellion, and the roots of all ills?
The baton of these subverters, these beacons of hope and inspiration, gets passed from one generation to the next. Their struggle persists until every citizen can claim their rights, until every voice can be heard, and until justice is truly blind to all distinctions.
The resounding voices of justice, a torch passed to a new generation, the multitude of champions, the heroes and heroines. The Iman Hazirs and Jibran Nasirs. The baton for a just and democratic Pakistan is handed down, and the clamour for justice is resounding louder.
We are children of these fighters for the democratic order, even if, and even when, populists will gain power again and will attempt to subvert this very edifice we are building. That will be a fight for another day. Today, the rulers and enforcers of injustice, be forewarned, for the tide of history, the march of history is poised against you.
The whispers are turning into cries. These cries into an unceasing chorus, a call for democratic and judicial order is getting louder. The demand for justice and equal rights echoes through the land, and the winds of change sweeps across the country. The struggle for a more just and democratic Pakistan cannot be silenced. The end to the unaccountable power, unchecked and arbitrary power, the specter of equality and democracy awaits us.
The specter of justice, the juggernaut is to sweep away the know-it-alls, the unaccountable powers that be, and the untouchable oppressors who have long held sway. The clarion cry for justice, first sparked amidst the windswept expanses of Balochistan, then ablaze amidst the rugged landscapes of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, now erupts into a fierce inferno, stirring the slumbering conscience of Punjab.
Across this vast land of the opressed, all are beginning to understand the profound injustices that have long weighed upon them, understand who the real rulers of this land are.
The march towards a more democratic Pakistan is an inevitability. It is a history written with blood. Lawyers and bloody civilians, bar associations and bar councils, the civil society, the silenced, the strangled and the maimed, are engaged in a relentless struggle. It’s time. It’s time to finish what started.
The feeble whispers, the timid whimpers of three-member benches are beckoning for a commanding crescendo of a full court’s moral might. The moment has arrived to shatter the chains of martial law.
Judges of Pakistan, the lawyers of Pakistan, unite!
Published in The Express Tribune, September 17th, 2023.
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