The rising political tide

Shakespeare said, "There is a tide in the affairs of men," and if it is encountered with courage and fortitude, the tide is transformed into a positive outcome, or else into chaos and calamity. The political tide is surging in Pakistan and there are perceptible symptoms that people, particularly the expanding middle class, has come to realise that military rulers and their remnants are anachronistic in the present day civilised existence. They have an image of a "glorious" Pakistan, adhering to the "spirit", which led to its creation, by the father of the nation - Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. If anything was repugnant to his cultured sensibility, it was dictatorial governance, either civil or military. He was a thorough-bred constitutionalist and the entire struggle for the creation of Pakistan was based on democratic norms and values.

Pakistan's recurrent derailment of democracy and over thirty years of nation's life into military rule has stripped the nation of its finer values, the sanctity of its institutions, and worst of all its image in the world, got tarnished as a state incapable of being governed through a viable democratic process. We must strive to remove the shackle of slavish compliance to a military ruler. Once for all. The movement for restoration of the deposed judges, is a turning point in the history of Pakistan's Political Culture.

The placid and indifferent attitude of the masses towards dictatorial rule, was being exploited by all the military rulers, notwithstanding General Pervez Musharraf, who surpassed all limits of propriety for the perpetuation of his rule, imposing two martial laws, during his 9-year rule, the last one under the covert name of Emergency dismissing nearly sixty judges of the Supreme Court including the Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, representing the sanctity of justice in the society.

First he made him non-functional on frivolous charges and subjecting him the worst possible treatment - a police constable pushing him into a car and even pulling him by his hairs - an obnoxious and a deplorable scene, which the entire world witnessed: With no sensitivity towards any one, under the so called Emergency, he got him house arrested along with his family, even children were not spared. The other judges were also arrested and kept in confinement. The judges of his own liking were appointed, under a judicial aberration called PCO, who legitimised all the "wrongs" he committed - the constitution was mercilessly tampered with oblivious of the fact that the constitution is a much too precious document, which binds a nation into a cohesive entity. The pernicious legacy of Martial Law makes mockery of justice if Law of Necessity and PCO, are not dispensed with.