Irrespective of the vindictive­ness of PTI Chairman Imran Khan, who during his tenure as prime minister derived sadis­tic pleasure in the humiliation and suffering of his political op­ponents, confining them in death cells, etc., propriety and civility demand that the former PM be given a better class in prison. 

The office and dignity of the prime minister’s office must be acknowledged and respected. Let the law take its course. This sys­tematic cycle of humiliating and belittling politicians who have held the highest elected constitu­tional public office must end. We have a history of mistreating our politicians, starting from the ha­rassment of Madre Millat Fatima Jinnah, who was subjected to a malicious campaign by Ayub Jun­ta, questioning her loyalty, to the hanging of an elected PM in a ju­dicial murder, and forcing the likes of Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy to proceed on forced exile, etc. Paki­stan was created by politicians of integrity, yet many of them were banned from politics by Ayub Khan under the EBDO in 1958. The political engineering process started, and Jinnah’s modern dem­ocratic welfare state, which guar­anteed equal rights to all citizens, was reduced to a dictatorship. 

Pakistan suffered the humiliation of defeat and surrender in 1971 because we wavered away from Jinnah’s vision, where the Constitu­tion was to be the supreme law and all institutions of the state were to work within their confined roles. Sanity must prevail, and this cycle of vengeance must be replaced by constitutional rule.

MALIK TARIQ ALI,

Lahore.