EVER SINCE the passage of the 26th Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan, influential lawyers, one after the other, have come out to threaten a widespread lawyers’ movement.

Notable lawyers leading the charge against the 26th Amendment have often been quoted as threatening a protest movement that would put the one led against Gen Pervez Musharraf to shame.

Yet, as the days have gone by since the amendment’s passage, the realisation has set in — within the lawyers’ community in particular and the public in general — that the much sought-after ‘lawyers movement’ may never really see the light of day.

There is no denying the fact that the charge against the dictatorship of Gen Musharraf was led from the front by Pakistan’s legal community. Hundreds and thousands of lawyers continued to protest day in and day out — often at the risk of being mercilessly beaten by the law enforcement agencies — with the single aim of ensuring the ‘rule of law’ and ‘judicial independence’ in the country.

These protests did eventually come to fruition when the judges who had been deposed by Gen Musharraf, including a former chief justice, were restored to their rightful position, which led the way to the eventual ouster of the dictator.

The success of this ‘lawyers’ movement’ is often seen as the golden period of unity of the legal community in this country. It was a time when the lawyers’ community had realised the progressive potential that it possessed to effect change. Yet, as the years went by, the lawyers took one wrong step after another. Intoxicated by their ouster of a military dictator and the restoration of democracy and an independent judiciary in the country, some lawyers ended up putting themselves over and above the law.

This meant that much like the police and the paramilitary forces, lawyers became a ‘force’ to be reckoned with. This newfound power, however, ended up being misused by some miscreants, with instances such as the ransacking of a hospital in Lahore, or the beating of assailants, or even judges, within court premises becoming the norm. As a result, lawyers who had once been respected for their role in the ouster of Gen Musharraf and hailed as champions of the ‘rule of law’, now began to be dreaded for their nuisance value.

The once united legal front has become a divided legal picket, with each group wanting to fight its own battles lest it benefits the other group.

All this meant that the leadership of bar politics became a coveted prize, with candidates often spending upwards of hundreds of thousands of rupees, directly or indirectly to ensure that they ended up winning their respective bar elections.

Even today, the yearly bar election cycles are in full swing; candidates are hopping from one election event to another, often to tables packed with the most succulent of food and the loudest of speeches. Yet, what seems to be missing at most of these election events is the idea which had united the lawyers in the first place, the idea of an ‘independent judiciary’ and the ‘rule of law’.

The 26th Amendment was in the works for at least a month, with repeated, often publicised meetings on a day-to-day basis between the political players. Everyone in Pakistan was aware of the design of the amendments, what was sought to be achieved and what was sought to be negated, and yet the lawyers’ community stood by and watched — it was vocal but idle — as it was given effect. This stands in contrast to the boisterous role played by the lawyers after the illegal ouster of former chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry by Gen Musharraf.

Some would argue that the aims and objectives of the 26th Amendment are as big an attack on the independence of judiciary as any attempts undertaken by Gen Musharraf, and yet the conspicuous absence of a vibrant legal response was, and continues to be, alarming. The one reason glaringly obvious for the lacklustre nature of dissent is a divided bar. The cut-throat nature of bar politics post the lawyers’ movement has meant that the legal community is now split into smaller groups. Each group is now loyal to its own objectives. This has meant that the once united legal front has become a divided legal picket, with each group wanting to fight its own battles lest it benefit the other group.

What has transpired at the Sindh High Court Bar Association, for example, is a real-time example of the same in operation. The Sindh High Court Bar Association after the appointment of Chief Justice Yahya Afridi was quick to congratulate the top judge on his ascent — only for its press release to be later snubbed by the correspondence from the vice president of the bar, who termed it the personal opinion of the president and the secretary, and not representative of the will of the bar association. Other bars across the country are no exception.

The results of the elections of the Supreme Court Bar Association are a further testament to the fragmented nature of the legal community today. As the group of the late Asma Jahangir, supposedly backed by the government, emerged victorious in the said elections, the fractured nature of the verdict across various stations throughout the country made it amply clear that the divide within the lawyers’ community continued to be omnipresent, even as the judicial dispensation in Pakistan faced an existential threat.

Suffice it to say that for as long as bar politics and electoral gains continue to dictate bar politics, Pakistan’s legal fraternity will remain devoid of its front seat at the table of influence and those dreaming of a lawyers’ movement, for the restoration of the rule of law, may, in fact, end up being rudely awakened.

The writer is a lawyer.

X: @sheheryarzaidi

Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2024