Lawyers are bad, really bad and will get what they deserve. But hey! If we end the debate right here and keep repeating and repeating how bad the lawyers are, this thing will happen again. It will happen again because in our pursuit of unceasing hate towards the black suits we are forgetting how we got here in the first place.
We did not get here because lawyers sat down in a room and out of nowhere decided to show the whole country that they were the worst of gangsters, so cruel that they would even attack the hospital. There is a gap of 16 days between the ‘triggering’ event on November 24 and the day of the incident i.e. December 11.
The whole debate has gone onto how bad the lawyers are, how all of them are gangsters, so much so that the whole country seems to have forgotten that the country in which they are living was also founded by a lawyer, Barrister Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Everything else seems to have disappeared altogether. Furthermore, more videos of lawyers misbehaving with public have surfaced, and are adding fuel to the fire and bringing more and more shame to the legal profession.
Yet who is going to explain this gap of 16 days when all this mess could have been prevented by due diligence on part of the government? On the contrary, the PM said that the government is glad that they did not intervene, otherwise a lot worse would have happened. To this, an anchor asked the government's primary spokeswoman Dr. Firdous Ashiq Awan, "What worse could have happened than this?" Startled Firdous suddenly came up with a classic ' the PM will look into loopholes, if any'.
Now obviously lawyers such as Babar Sattar, Aitzaz Ahzan, Barrister Ali Zafar would never be part of such aggression, let alone aggression they would never imagine themselves gathering at such a procession. Therefore, it is easy for them to say that those 'bad' lawyers have brought shame to them because obviously they know they are unlike them. My intention is not to judge them but rather I am amazed as to how even they are missing the whole point. It is not just about the lawyers’ indecency, the little tiny events that led to final crashing cord must be examined.
Where is the government? If we do not blame the government at all, unfortunate incidents like these will continue to follow. In effect, Usman Buzdar has been given a clean chit that no matter what happens he holds no responsibility whatsoever and no liability either; not even a censure. Where is that 'writ of the state' that the government was boasting about during Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s march? Therefore, punishing the lawyers is one thing, but not holding the government responsible will yield unpredictability callous outcomes.
Imagine some other community, labour class, for example, imagine their grievances against the government or the factory they work in. Imagine them declaring their demands in a timeline on ‘Day 1’. Then imagine the government's indifference to their reasonable demands and also that the government won't even give them some sort of consolation. Days will follow and finally a tipping point will come and the chaos will be waiting.
The government would arrest the aggressors, beat them up, condemn them for taking the law into their hands, and bring them to justice. But what about the government? Is it not supposed to prevent catastrophic damages like these? Is that why we choose governments? Is the government supposed to take a chill pill and come into action after something bad happens?
If that is how it is going to be then why do we need a government in the first place? If everyone is to do everything by oneself then why bother? As I have broached in my other article the psychological aspect to this scenario, that a criminal is not a lawyer, a doctor, a son, a mother, a father, a daddy, a brother, a friend, a Muslim, a non-Muslim when he is on his way to commit a crime. At that very moment, that individual or mob is taken over by its ego or whatever you may want to call it. You do not believe me? Ask a criminologist.
Therefore, either we can choose to fill our dopamine level by constantly cursing the lawyer community (as not the actual culprits but the whole community is being dragged into this), just like we do it to our cricketers when they lose, or we can choose to see this whole situation objectively and give it a logical end so that nothing of this sort happens again.
If we are to look at this situation objectively at all then each entity needs to be given its due blame respectively. Firstly, the doctors for displaying the most notorious of display by involving themselves into this whole situation, clearly there is no punishment for notorious displays but something for doctors associations' to look into for retribution in future and avoid doctors indulgence in fights.
Secondly, the government must be held responsible for its sheer inaction. No attempt was made by the government to reverse engineer what was visible from the naked eye. Instead, the government chose to be a bystander. If something criminal is happening or a crime is about to be committed, the law does not place a burden on me (a civilian) to act but it places a heavy burden on the government in the form of its agents and the government is vicariously liable for the actions or inactions of its officials, who on the day were onlookers. And of course, those lawyers who broke the law on the day must be punished as per the law.
Just as there is no justification for the chaotic display of criminal acts committed by the lawyers who stormed the hospital, likewise, there is no justification for the government for not having stopped the angry mob from getting to their destination in the first place. To expect anything less of the government would be tantamount to utter neglect and injustice which could result in more passivity by the government in future.
Is that what we really want? If not, then let us all re-examine our focal point and alongside punishment to lawyers, which has its own significance, steer the questioning towards the government.
What the government is not comprehending in the PIC incident is that this could just be the beginning. Cameras made sure this time that only one single perspective got naked and veiled the doctors and the government's part. But what about the next chaos?
Will the government be hoping for a decent organisation such as Ansar-ul-Islam to do their job for them in every public gathering or protest? If anything, government and police should learn from them as they did better policing of millions of what the police could not do of less than a thousand.
We did not get here because lawyers sat down in a room and out of nowhere decided to show the whole country that they were the worst of gangsters, so cruel that they would even attack the hospital. There is a gap of 16 days between the ‘triggering’ event on November 24 and the day of the incident i.e. December 11.
The whole debate has gone onto how bad the lawyers are, how all of them are gangsters, so much so that the whole country seems to have forgotten that the country in which they are living was also founded by a lawyer, Barrister Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Everything else seems to have disappeared altogether. Furthermore, more videos of lawyers misbehaving with public have surfaced, and are adding fuel to the fire and bringing more and more shame to the legal profession.
Yet who is going to explain this gap of 16 days when all this mess could have been prevented by due diligence on part of the government? On the contrary, the PM said that the government is glad that they did not intervene, otherwise a lot worse would have happened. To this, an anchor asked the government's primary spokeswoman Dr. Firdous Ashiq Awan, "What worse could have happened than this?" Startled Firdous suddenly came up with a classic ' the PM will look into loopholes, if any'.
Now obviously lawyers such as Babar Sattar, Aitzaz Ahzan, Barrister Ali Zafar would never be part of such aggression, let alone aggression they would never imagine themselves gathering at such a procession. Therefore, it is easy for them to say that those 'bad' lawyers have brought shame to them because obviously they know they are unlike them. My intention is not to judge them but rather I am amazed as to how even they are missing the whole point. It is not just about the lawyers’ indecency, the little tiny events that led to final crashing cord must be examined.
Where is the government? If we do not blame the government at all, unfortunate incidents like these will continue to follow. In effect, Usman Buzdar has been given a clean chit that no matter what happens he holds no responsibility whatsoever and no liability either; not even a censure. Where is that 'writ of the state' that the government was boasting about during Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s march? Therefore, punishing the lawyers is one thing, but not holding the government responsible will yield unpredictability callous outcomes.
Imagine some other community, labour class, for example, imagine their grievances against the government or the factory they work in. Imagine them declaring their demands in a timeline on ‘Day 1’. Then imagine the government's indifference to their reasonable demands and also that the government won't even give them some sort of consolation. Days will follow and finally a tipping point will come and the chaos will be waiting.
The government would arrest the aggressors, beat them up, condemn them for taking the law into their hands, and bring them to justice. But what about the government? Is it not supposed to prevent catastrophic damages like these? Is that why we choose governments? Is the government supposed to take a chill pill and come into action after something bad happens?
If that is how it is going to be then why do we need a government in the first place? If everyone is to do everything by oneself then why bother? As I have broached in my other article the psychological aspect to this scenario, that a criminal is not a lawyer, a doctor, a son, a mother, a father, a daddy, a brother, a friend, a Muslim, a non-Muslim when he is on his way to commit a crime. At that very moment, that individual or mob is taken over by its ego or whatever you may want to call it. You do not believe me? Ask a criminologist.
Therefore, either we can choose to fill our dopamine level by constantly cursing the lawyer community (as not the actual culprits but the whole community is being dragged into this), just like we do it to our cricketers when they lose, or we can choose to see this whole situation objectively and give it a logical end so that nothing of this sort happens again.
If we are to look at this situation objectively at all then each entity needs to be given its due blame respectively. Firstly, the doctors for displaying the most notorious of display by involving themselves into this whole situation, clearly there is no punishment for notorious displays but something for doctors associations' to look into for retribution in future and avoid doctors indulgence in fights.
Secondly, the government must be held responsible for its sheer inaction. No attempt was made by the government to reverse engineer what was visible from the naked eye. Instead, the government chose to be a bystander. If something criminal is happening or a crime is about to be committed, the law does not place a burden on me (a civilian) to act but it places a heavy burden on the government in the form of its agents and the government is vicariously liable for the actions or inactions of its officials, who on the day were onlookers. And of course, those lawyers who broke the law on the day must be punished as per the law.
Just as there is no justification for the chaotic display of criminal acts committed by the lawyers who stormed the hospital, likewise, there is no justification for the government for not having stopped the angry mob from getting to their destination in the first place. To expect anything less of the government would be tantamount to utter neglect and injustice which could result in more passivity by the government in future.
Is that what we really want? If not, then let us all re-examine our focal point and alongside punishment to lawyers, which has its own significance, steer the questioning towards the government.
What the government is not comprehending in the PIC incident is that this could just be the beginning. Cameras made sure this time that only one single perspective got naked and veiled the doctors and the government's part. But what about the next chaos?
Will the government be hoping for a decent organisation such as Ansar-ul-Islam to do their job for them in every public gathering or protest? If anything, government and police should learn from them as they did better policing of millions of what the police could not do of less than a thousand.