IT seems Pakistan has become a republic where anyone having a group of, say, a thousand individuals with aggressive and violent tendencies can be above the law. The recent riots in Lahore depict the true picture of a banana republic. No one is above the law. One should face the criminal cases through legal ways and not by blocking roads or calling one’s supporters to fight the state machinery.

Leaders should lead from the front, not by sitting and hiding at home and refusing to face the courts. One should follow the example of Nelson Mandela and other such national leaders who faced imprisonment for more than two decades, but never asked their supporters to save them from the law.

In the past, political leaders used to give life lessons about everyone being equal before the law by setting personal examples. They offered arrest even if they were implicated in a false case. But we have leaders who love to hold the entire justice system as hostage. Such a situation has brought the country to the brink of anarchy and civil war. Never before the country has witnessed such cowards posing as leaders.

Breaking the law and then getting away with it has been the hallmark of the political elite. The law of the land apparently is applicable only to the poor and the middle classes of the country. This is the unfortunate and undeniable reality of life in Pakistan.

Mir Bewragh Khan Rind
Sukkur

Published in Dawn, April 10th, 2023