Time for tough questions

Especially when little makes sense

It has been quite a week. We have had news of cars running on water — and defamation law suits associated with it. Mr Hamid Mir is now at the centre of a controversy surrounding the laws of physics. Well, stranger things have happened I suppose. The not-so-strange thing is that the Supreme Court has struck down the new contempt legislation as unconstitutional. Even though the electronic media did its best to make a big deal of the issue, everyone expected it. The law was flawed in multiple ways. If the purpose behind it was to solve something then it didn’t. If instead the purpose was to buy some time for the new PM? Well the jury is still out on that one. It will not be surprising if the government brings out a different version of the law. Obviously the jaanisars of the apex court will jump on the opportunity to file another petition. That means another case and some more time. This circus could go on.

Electronic media was also quick to attribute to the Supreme Court the view that the parliament had malafide intentions when passing the new law. The hype, however, soon died since the SCOPAK order does not engage in the detailed analysis of the motivations of the Parliamentarians that the media attributed to the court. Had the Supreme Court said any such thing it would have added fuel to the not-so-silent fire. Margalla Hills and surrounding areas can do without that for now.

The electronic media also needs to realize that by focusing on the motivations of the legislators, it is opening a Pandora’s Box. Why does a legislator vote for a particular law? There could be a million reasons. Therefore a judgment by a court or the media is at best as logical as sitting in front of a crystal ball while trying to explain what made Mr Amir Liaquat arrange his facial hair this way. My point is that you can’t get into people’s heads to decide what motivates them. I might vote for a law because I believe in it or I might vote for a law because I want to please the party chairperson, because I hate the opponents of the law, because I simply don’t care and the word “yes” just sounds more pleasant, because my mom said something, because my best friend loves the law or because I think saying yes now will help a law that I sponsor in the future. Is any of those reasons less valid than the other? How do you decide?

If talk of motivations is fair game then the electronic media should have the stomach to accept that people will questions its motivations too. And if a court is willing to get into the motivations of the legislators then, of course, the legislators will question the court’s motivations. We all have them, right? So what do we achieve by debating for hours and hours on “why” you choose something. This society can use a little less of the “why”.

A lawyer who was obsessed with why his sister chose to marry a man of her choice recently shot her in a courtroom in the Sindh High Court. The legal fraternity, quite ridiculously, called a strike to protest the contempt of court law but has never even worn black armbands to support the cause of women in this country. I am really confused about what counts as “an issue” in this country. Just come to the lower courts and see the contempt for the system being celebrated each day as lawyers pay off the staff for an “efficient” outcome. Working a corrupt system isn’t an issue and enactment of a law that was clearly going to be struck down is a reason for a holiday (aka strike). But what about the murder of a woman and silence over killings of so many women in this country? Little made sense this week—the car running on water included.

Re-reading certain bits of Fukuyama’s latest book The Origins of Political Order depressed me even more. He speaks of tribal culture before a society develops into something more inclusive. But even before tribes he speaks of tied based on kinship and I wonder if that is as far as have we gotten as a society? I am not selling this as an empirical or research based finding of course — just asking a question. Who your father is and who he knows, who your dada was and where you went for your high school in Lahore clearly matters to people a lot more than your intellect, professional competence or where you were trained. I don’t mind the hot days with no electricity — as long as I know that the work that I put in will bring some reward. But I wonder how many people in this society feel worthless as individuals because they can’t “impress” others with their high school or father’s name/connections?

I am very fortunate that even though I did not go to an elite high school (I went to one in Sheikhupura), I can still sell myself as a professional. But it is heart-breaking to see people losing their self-esteem who, because of one reason or the other, didn’t come across the same opportunities that I did. At a medical store, I recently met a young man who was unemployed and had eyes that were empty of hope. He had trained as a pharmacist and couldn’t find a job. He felt betrayed by society thanks to nepotism. What does one tell such people to ensure they don’t lose hope and more importantly self-esteem? Can we blame someone for asking: why should I spend money on my education when the primary thing that defines me is whose son I am and who I know? And if you try to build a name for yourself only because you don’t want your kids to suffer, are you hurting the system or helping your children? And what should matter more?

These and other questions, an awful lot of them, trouble me as they trouble many of you. Over the past 18 months or so I have used this space to raising some of those questions here and many of your comments/thoughts have provided the beginnings of promising answers. For that I am grateful to the readers, this paper as well as its ever helpful staff. I will not be writing for this publication as a regular columnist anymore but I am grateful for the opportunity. Let’s keep the conversation alive and let’s focus more on the difficult questions — that we can ask of ourselves and others — rather than easy answers.

The writer is a Barrister and has a Masters degree from Harvard Law School. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @wordoflaw