Lawyers are striking across the Punjab. A district and sessions judge, Zawwar Hussain, refused to accommodate their demand that appointments to clerical staff of the district courts be shared with the executive of the Lahore Bar Association, an outrageous but settled modus operandi between bar and bench. Judge Hussain’s refusal to concede climaxed last week when a group of protesting lawyers at the premises of the Lahore High Court clashed with police summoned to the premises by the controversial and politicised Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court, Khawaja Sharif. Scuffles outside the CJ’s office led to the arrest of lawyers who were charged with terrorism but set free when their supporters went on a rampage. In due course, the demand for disciplinary action against senior police officers who had ordered the attack was added to the demand for Judge Hussain’s transfer, finally ending up with a demand for the CJ’s head.
In counter protest, over 1300 district and sessions judges submitted their resignations. But this only provoked the lawyers whose numbers have swelled to include supporters from bar associations across the province. The judges have been persuaded to withdraw their resignations and the CJ has nominated a three member commission to probe the incident. Judge Hussain has also been persuaded by the CJ to take a four month “leave” of absence. But this has not dimmed the lawyers’ outrage and the “movement” is threatening to acquire ominous proportions because all manner of vested interests have jumped into the fray. These include officials of the PPP government, which is locked in a battle for survival with the Supreme Court, along with their respective bodies of lawyers and independents who are in the midst of an electoral battle to capture the commanding heights of the Supreme Court Bar Association.
Three criticisms have been leveled against the lawyers. First, that their original demand for a sharing of the administrative quota of employments was unreasonable. Second, that they provoked a violent backlash from the court and police when they became unruly and threatened to storm the CJ’s chambers. Both criticisms are justified.
But they are neither unprecedented nor extraordinary. The young lawyers have been angry since they launched the lawyers’ movement three years ago for the restoration of the Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, and succeeded. Their alienation from, and resentment of, their leaders like Aitzaz Ahsan, Hamid Khan and Akram Sheikh follows a division of the spoils of victory in which they feel they haven’t even got the crumbs while their leaders have been selected to either pack the benches or grab the most lucrative cases before the restored judges. It is also a measure of their much vaunted and aggressive political tactics during the lawyers’ movement that they were allowed to get away with browbeating lower court judges without any disciplinary action taken against them.
A third criticism alleges that the lawyers are acting at the behest of the PPP in general and Babar Awan, the federal law minister, in particular. Evidence is cited of Dr Awan’s distribution of funds to district bar associations in an effort to buy their support. The belated support by a pro-PPP lawyers’ group for Ms Asma Jehangir’s bid for the presidency of the SCBA is also noted in the charge sheet.
But this charge is baseless. The lawyers are also led by two past presidents of the Lahore Bar Association – Muhammad Shah and Manzur Qadir – who won their spurs from the platform of the anti-PPP Hamid Khan group, with the former being bloodied at the hands of police. Indeed, their leader is none other than Ali Ahmed Kurd, the fiery lawyer from Balochistan who rose to prominence during the 2007-09 lawyers’ movement. Mr Kurd had thundered two years ago that he would not rest until Khawaja Sharif was made CJ of the LHC and today he is demanding the same CJ’s head. The supplementary charge that Dr Awan’s cash-laden briefcases have helped Ms Jehangir’s cause is also ridiculous because the district bars are only marginally involved in the SCBA elections.
The biggest beneficiary of this new development is the beleaguered PPP government which is gloating over the divide between bar and bench at a time when the SC is gearing up to deliver a coup de grace against President Asif Zardari. If the new lawyers’ movement is not quelled, the SC could find itself in a soup when the government tries to marshal the same hot-headed lawyers to defend its cause against a resurgent and unaccountable judiciary from which the lawyers are increasingly alienated.
What you sow, so shall you reap. The 2007-09 lawyers’ movement let the genie out of the bottle by condoning undemocratic protest methods. The subsequent opportunism and corruption of most of its leaders and the blatant political bias of the restored judiciary served not only to alienate the more honest ones from the ranks but also taught others to emulate their seniors and grab a piece of the action. Now the wheel has come full circle. Old leaders of the bar have been compelled to support young lawyers against the very bench from which they draw their benefits. This is yet another demonstration of the extraordinary twists and turns of Pakistan’s fissured state institutions and civil society organizations.