Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [68]
So if the Pakistani courts have repeatedly released extremist leaders and terrorist suspects, this is not just because they have been intimidated by the extremists or the government. Considerable sympathy on the part of judges and lawyers is also often present, as for the assassin of Governor Salman Taseer in January 2011.
I also have to say that both conservative lawyers like Mehmood Ashraf Khan and liberals like Munir Malik in their conversations with me displayed on many issues a contempt for logic, rationality and basic rules of evidence – no worse than the rest of the population, but these people are senior lawyers. Mr Malik too shared to the full the belief that the US, India, Israel and other countries were – for reasons that he could barely explain himself – supporting the Pakistani Taleban, and were responsible for their terrorist outrages.16
Just as important as any of this – indeed, fundamental to Pakistan’s hopes of progress – is whether the Lawyers’ Movement represents a solid mass movement for reform, or just another desperate search for a magic key that would miraculously solve Pakistan’s problems without anyone having actually to work steadily to achieve change. In the New York Times article mentioned above, James Traub described the lawyers he met at a demonstration as ‘apparently deranged’ by enthusiasm for their cause, and some of the slogans I saw raised would certainly support that view. ‘Restoration of Chief Justice Means Salvation of Pakistan’ read one placard above the Bar Association in Multan. ‘Independent Judiciary Will Solve Every Problem’ read another.
On the whole the evidence as of 2010 concerning the future of the Lawyers’ Movement is pretty discouraging. To put it at its simplest, masses of ordinary Pakistanis supported the Lawyers’ Movement not because of its programme, but because it seemed the only force able and willing to challenge the increasingly hated rule of President Musharraf; just as they supported it later out of hatred for President Zardari. This certainly did not reflect popular admiration for lawyers as a class, or the official law as an institution.
Moreover, the masses could not in fact have supported the Lawyers’ Movement’s liberal programme anyway, because the movement did not have one. The lawyers’ only collective programme has been the independence, power and prestige of the judiciary – which is an excellent thing in principle, except that the judicial system is one of the most flawed institutions in Pakistan, and consequently loathed by the masses.
Unfortunately, although individuals such as Mr Ashraf Khan have brought forward some very valuable proposals for judicial reform, the Lawyers’ Movement as a whole has not generated any serious movement among lawyers for reform of their own judicial system – something that is absolutely essential if mass support for the movement is to be maintained in the long term, but would be very uncomfortable for many lawyers. Indeed, most of the members of the movement with whom I spoke did not seem to understand what I was driving at when I asked about this, let alone think that it was in any way important.
In his suo moto (by his own motion, i.e., not in response to a case brought before the Court) judgments in 2007 – 9, Chief Justice Chaudhry undoubtedly righted a number of individual wrongs, and garnered a great deal of popularity by hauling police chiefs and bureaucrats before the Court and humiliating them publicly. He also appears to have a genuine commitment to the supremacy of the law, at least as defined by himself. His personal style in this it must be said was entirely autocratic, as was that of other senior leaders of the Lawyers’ Movement whom