Historical Significance of the Movement for Independence of Judiciary

Historical Significance of the Movement for Independence of Judiciary

Dr. M. Ashraf Adeel


Pakistani lawyers have slowly but surely filled the leadership vacuum in the country. They are educated and modern middle class men and women who have decided to stand up, look the dictators in the eye, and say ‘no’! The constitutional rights of the people, they have asserted, will be compromised no more. As a result the country is up in an unprecedented collective resolve under a new form of leadership. At no point in Pakistan’s history, such collective middle class leadership has been provided to the people for such a noble cause. The movement is completely focused on the goal of rehabilitating the independence of judiciary in Pakistan which, in simple terms, means rehabilitation of the constitutional rights of all citizens, regardless of their social and economic status or religious creed and race. It is this focus which makes the movement noble and revolutionary. Luckily for Pakistan, the leadership of the movement is not in the hands of a single individual but the Bar Councils of the country and their membership. Reference against the Chief justice of Pakistan, Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry , has functioned as the catalyst for initiating the movement but he neither started the movement nor does he lead it. The movement is being led by the collective will and conscience of the legal fraternity in the country. This makes the movement unique in addition to being noble and revolutionary.
The question, therefore, is: What is the significance of this movement in the context of Pakistani society, its history and its future? The answer, in a nutshell, is that this movement
1. can restore our self-respect as a society;
2. it can redefine our history, and
3. it can save our future as a nation.
Let me elaborate. A nation which is made to fail time and again to govern itself under rule of law loses confidence in its own abilities and slowly starts viewing itself, sub-consciously, as immature and morally incompetent somehow. The rest of the world reinforces this feeling by refusing to accord fullest respect to such a nation. As a result people become quite pessimistic and their creative power and moral energy do not get fully channelized into national construction and development. Absence of rule of law leads to demolition of merit system as well and, through collective loss of hope, the nation starts lagging behind other comparable societies. This further accentuates its sense of paralysis and deeply damages its self-respect. No amount of demagoguery on the part of unconstitutional rulers can save a nation from this deep collective psychological damage. That is one basic reason dictatorships are considered so destructive. Since our nation has been subjected to this trauma time and again, its self-confidence has been eroded immeasurably. The current movement for restoration of people’s right to constitutional governance, if successful, will restore our self-respect as a nation because, this time around, people themselves will have led for their own cause and achieved success. It will establish in people’s collective consciousness that they can lead their society and decide its shape and destiny. In a way, the success of the current movement will overhaul our national character and self-image. It will also enhance our global image as nation irrevocably committed to rule of law. (That is one reason all segments of the society, including the establishment and vested interests supporting it, need to do some deep rethinking before positioning themselves in relation to this movement).
Many have said that this movement has brought Pakistan to a defining moment in its history. One way this claim can be interpreted is that the current struggle of the lawyers in the country is going to give a sense of direction to our national life in history. Pakistan movement originated as a movement for protecting the rights of a minority from the overwhelming strength of a presumably insensitive majority. This has been the central justificatory principle for seeking a separate homeland for the Muslims in the sub-continent. Therefore, in one basic sense Pakistan movement was a movement for the rights of the people---a minority group. If that happens to be a correct idea then Pakistan has been derailed from its historical track every time it has been subjected to unconstitutional governance in the form of military dictatorships. Dictatorships have violated the sacred principle that motivated the movement for Pakistan. The ongoing lawyers’ movement for the restoration of constitutional governance is, therefore, a struggle for recapturing the true spirit of Pakistan movement. Its success can redefine our history for us by restoring the original direction of Pakistan’s national life. It will make us true to ourselves as a nation by structuring our governance on the principle of protection of people’s rights at all costs. (It must be added that, by the same logic, violating the rights of minorities in today’s Pakistan would also amount to violating the spirit of Pakistan movement.)
Success of the ongoing movement for judicial independence can also ensure a dignified future for Pakistani nation by not only guaranteeing civil rights of the citizenry, particularly their right to govern themselves through their chosen representatives, but also by establishing confidence of the people in middle class leadership. This later factor may pave the way for emergence of new political arrangements in the country and may bring both elitism and extremism into check. Obviously middle class in the country is neither elite nor extremist. If its leadership is established, the country may be saved from swinging towards extremism. The United States and the rest of the Western world should take a cue. If dictatorship continues in Pakistan, the country stands every danger of swinging towards an extremist dispensation. However, if the current movement succeeds, the chances of such a swing will be considerably reduced, and, perhaps, eliminated.
Once an environment of constitutional governance is established, people will flourish through actualizing their potential freely in a fair setting. Nations are not built in a day but such fair and free environment can definitely set the ball rolling for our better future. Pakistanis are a talented and hardworking people. Our only and greatest misfortune have been the power brokers of our country who have always sold us out for perpetuation of their own power or for a miserly pittance:
Qaumay frokhtand o cheh arzaan frokhtand
(They sold the nation and they sold it mighty cheap).
Political parties in the country should also learn some lessons from the current situation. What they failed to do as political parties, a section of middle class professionals has rendered possible by creating a socially and politically rich movement. Therefore, in the next elections, they should look to middle class professionals for issuing party tickets for assemblies. They need to come out of their cocoons and start seeing the realities on the ground. Their policies ---elitist, opportunistic, or obscurantist---have really alienated the masses.
It may be added that the very emergence of the current movement in Pakistan at this juncture of its history is a manifestation of people’s will to take matters in their own hands and make a last-ditch effort to protect themselves from the machinations of the established brokers of power in the country. Therefore, the chances of failure for this movement are minimal. So far, the establishment has failed to tire out the will of the lawyers and the people of the country who support the movement. The establishment has failed to suppress the collective spirit of protest even by resorting to a massacre through an ally in Karachi. Nobody dare say that the Karachi massacre has cowed down the people and they won’t be on the streets next time the call comes. Overall the establishment has already placed itself in a huge dilemma: every strong arm tactic it has used has backfired. The strategy to prolong the crisis and tire out the legal fraternity has also failed (and does not have the potential to outwit the lawyers in the days to come). Therefore, the official pundits are at a loss as to how to defeat this movement. Let us remind them that such movements, which emerge from the hearts and souls of a people, cannot be defeated. Such movements keep surging like a river in a state of flood. You cannot stop the flow by either badmouthing it or kicking it or by hatching conspiracies against it. The current must flow on and must reach its destination. The best strategy in dealing with such peoples’ movements is to yield to their noble ideals. Otherwise the tide of history wipes you out. Nobody is an automatic darling of the forces of history. You can either work with them or self-destruct by going against them.
Finally, the lawyers and the people are showing great patience while working this historic movement to its logical conclusion. They have proven by now that violence and conspiracies cannot defeat them. Extra-constitutional tactics of the establishment will continue to backfire as long as the lawyers and the people remain united and focused. The government will only dig a deeper ditch for itself by resorting to extra-constitutional moves. However, one hopes that it will refrain from proving the dictum that reason takes a rather early leave of a scared dictatorship.
M. Ashraf Adeel
Department of Philosophy
Kutztown University of PennsylvaniaUSA