Principles, rules and laws these are the progressive benchmarks which humans traversed through their journey of discovery spanning the cycles of centuries.
Muslim social scientists were the pioneers in giving the concepts of equality, justice, social responsibility, basic rights and an upfront display of rule of law. Rulers or Muslim caliphs were many a time treated as common citizen in day to day litigations.
The West learnt the lesson of love for knowledge, discovery and supremacy of law. Pakistanis as a nation are well aware of the forte of law. The father of the nation, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah revolved the complete struggle of independence around supremacy of rule of law, which he defended at every forum and displayed through personal examples of character loftiness.
Pakistan today is passing through hard times; it is not something unusual rather it is very natural. The real problem is the inability of a nation in handling the hard times, because then the same multiplies up to a level where it is gyrated into sheer chaos. Wakeup calls are taken as mere whimpers of stray cats of the streets. This is really disturbing. Why is it happening? Who is responsible? How this attitude can be rectified? These million-dollar questions have one answer that is to promulgate the rule of law.
People in Pakistan are power and entertainment hungry. Any society where rule of law is weak, the power hungry-ness is a natural outcome. The entertainment starvation is the indicator that people have different standards for public and private demeanours. All the pillars of state require an overhaul of their inner mechanism and organisms.
To start with, it is the duty of every citizen to caste vote. As majority of literate Pakistanis do not caste vote and then curse elected representatives for not delivering, they are the first defaulters of rule of law.
ABID LATIF SINDHU
Karachi
